THE EARTHLOOP TRILOGY is a Kickstarter project for three time travel novels, stylistically inspired by THE X-FILES and classic Sci-Fi anthologies. It’s a lot of fun, but it won’t get made if it doesn’t reach its funding goal by September 12th.
This chapter was initially included in Who Built The Humans? as part of the Furukawa Novella. I plan to completely rewrite it (adding more details and lore) for Earthloop. This might be how THE FURUKAWA PARADOX BEGINS. The switching on of the time machine is a critical moment that is returned to in the trilogy, so it all ties together.
Nori Furukawa inhaled sharply, hoping the cold air might wake him up. He adjusted his moustache, feeling the condensation between his finger and thumb, and tried to twist it into a point. In front of him the plastic banner announcing today’s lecture swayed in the breeze, its upper left attachment floating loose. This was not good enough.
Putting his coffee down, he climbed atop a bench and started to retie the knot that had come loose. His grey scarf flapped about as the wind picked up, his hair misshapen and unruly. He tied the knot, then held the banner in both hands, moving it up close to the fence to make it taut. Next he moved to one side to reach further over the bush between the banner and the bench, before realising he had knocked something with his foot.
“You almost dropped this, sir,” someone said. Nori looked over his shoulder to his left, seeing the woman holding his coffee with both hands.
“Brigid! Thank you.” He dropped the sign and held his hand out.
“It’s okay sir,” Brigid said. She put the coffee down under the bench and ran up the concrete steps to the elevated area behind the sign. She took the loose corner and pulled it close to the railing, nodding to Nori. He tautened the rope and tied a new knot over the old one, making sure it wouldn’t come loose again.
“There, it won’t fall now sir,” she smiled.
“Please, you know my name. Are you going tonight?”
“Of course, Nori.”
Nori smiled, stepping off the bench and looking at the banner. Brigid came back down the steps to stand beside him.
Professor Nori Furukawa – Unlocking the past. Saturday 9th January. 7:30pm
Physics department. Room A39. Doors open 7:00pm. Public tickets £15. Free for students
Around the words was a single line that had looped back on itself in a figure-of-eight style, splitting the professor’s name and the event into two distinct spaces, emulating the infinity symbol. It was bright orange, a cartoon plasma trail that ended in the back of a retro-futuristic rocket that had caught up with a shinier, less beat up version of itself. Whilst professionally printed, the design seemed rushed, implying it was made last-minute.
“I’ll see you there then, thanks for saving my coffee. I owe you one,” Nori said. Brigid nodded and smiled. Nori tucked his scarf back into his jacket and picked up the coffee cup, walking away.
The evening lecture passed quickly, with Nori effortlessly taking the audience through the basics of relativity in the first half, and showcasing his new work and theories in the second. Brigid had heard most of it all before, and so busied herself in the simpler parts by drawing coffee cups and steam on her notebook. She spent the rest half-listening, half-staring at professor Furukawa. Then he began his conclusion. He adjusted his moustache in the subtle way he always did before wrapping up his classes, hoping nobody noticed, then nudged the microphone a bit closer.
“Thank you all for coming. I can see a lot of familiar faces, some alumni, some undergrads, some friends. But there are some unfamiliar faces too. My students will have no doubt noticed the clicking of cameras from the front and back rows, and that is no accident. A few weeks before this lecture was formally announced, I sent ahead some messages to a select few newspapers and independent journalists. The reason is that the conclusion to this lecture, my findings regarding closed timelike curves, has for a while been secretly aiming toward a hidden goal,” Nori began. Brigid looked up from her notebook. She could tell from his tone that Nori was about to make one of his famous strange announcements, the kind of outbursts that had meant she had heard of him long before meeting him. Nori twisted almost imperceptibly, cracking his back and fingers before beginning.
“In recent years there have been some big stories in the world of science, talking points which never seem to go away. Simulation theory, artificial intelligence, time travel. Each of these talks to a voice deep inside us, each posing its own unique philosophical question. Is this real? Is life unique in some way? Can I alter the past? These are questions that have haunted human minds since before we had the capacity to conceptualise them. And today, we stand on the edge of the answer,” Nori said. He was standing as tall as he could, eyes closed as if imagining something, and smiling. These were the moments Brigid loved, the moments where Nori seemed to be taken away under his own momentum, the professor becoming the performer. As Nori let his last sentence sink in Brigid imagined him speaking to a much larger crowd, and hoped one day that he might. Then, satisfied that the journalists had scribbled down what they needed to, the professor started again.
“In America, the rise of the Virtualist church has brought simulation theory to the masses. Now, even without its charismatic founder at the helm, the church continues to grow. More than ever, people are turning their eyes to the heavens and thinking of new possibilities. We all have our theories as to the beginnings of time, that black holes can form new universes, that our world is just one permutation of a layered multiverse, and I have my own theory. I propose that time itself need not have a beginning, nor an end. Time travel is not just a plot for science fiction writers, but the final key to the mystery of existence,” Nori said. He let the words settle. Brigid replayed them in her head, trying to decipher what might come next. Nori posed subtly, angling himself toward the flashing cameras and smiling.
“Of course some theories are taken more seriously than others. For example, what if I was to tell you all that I brought you here tonight to show you a functioning time machine?” Nori asked the audience. Brigid looked around the room nervously. Some of the other students laughed, but the journalists all seemed to be leaning forwards, as if anticipating something. She began to wonder who they worked for, who Nori had contacted. Then he began again.
“Time travel in fiction predominantly seems to be obsessed with altering the past. It is an inherently personal notion, to spend that one extra night with a lover, to say what you wish you could have said,” Nori said, his eyes scanning the lecture theatre. Brigid hurriedly faced her notebook, adding more crosshatching to her drawings.
“We all yearn to swim against the current of time. Ever since we are children we feel trapped by linearity, by missed opportunities. Most of us learn from our mistakes, but we still have to make them. As we grow we will outlive pets and loved ones, we will outgrow lovers and they will outgrow us. Life from some angles is a constant state of loss. But the truth is simple, the past is unalterable. Once a moment has happened we cannot change it, and it is this fact of our reality that leads most of us to believe that time travel is impossible, because how else would the universe protect itself from grieving time travellers? I ask however, what if we were to go back and not change a thing? The universe would have no reason to stop us, we would not violate any laws. No new branches would arise from our reality. And if we could go back, what if we learned that our presence in the past is the very same thing that made our travel to the past possible, perhaps even inevitable?” Nori asked the audience. The cameras were flashing again at the back of the lecture hall, but Brigid was shaking her head. If this was the setup to a joke it wasn’t working. People were buying it. She glanced around at the other students, each of them equally confused or amused by what the professor was saying. There was no doubt that some of them would have overheard him in his office at least once, arguing with himself about the implications of time travel. He had gained a reputation for it, one Brigid had hoped he wouldn’t build upon. Nervously she curled her fingers around the cuffs of her shirt and waited. Nori glanced her way and softly smiled, before turning back to the crowds and nodding at particular journalists, then ducking his head away from the projector beam and speaking again.
“In science fiction books, your protagonist may often fret over the accidental destruction of an ancient lineage of crab, or perhaps the redirection of a stream of cause and effect. But if timelike curves naturally exist in the universe and the universe has yet to end, then I propose travel backwards in time is not nearly as dangerous as the movies like to say it is. In fact, I would go as far as to propose that the past holds more safety for us than the future. If the past is certain, then the future is inarguably the riskier direction to travel in,” Nori said. Again he paused for notes and photos, turning the page in front of him and preparing to read again. He pressed a button set into the lectern and looked over his shoulder, checking the next slide had come on. It depicted a linear timeline, with a spaceship’s trajectory curving back into its own past. Brigid remembered the banner advertising the lecture and suddenly felt uncomfortable in her seat. If Nori had meant all that he had said up until now, then there was a real chance that he might actually be crazy, as everyone had joked he might be.
“One might imagine advanced societies backing themselves up, entombing copies of themselves in the past. But I am getting carried away with myself, I am not a science fiction author, and you did not come here tonight to listen to my daydreams. You came to see their inspiration,” the professor explained. He leaned forward and switched to the next slide. The image on the overhead screen was blurred, a photocopy of a yellowed blueprint for a strange triangular structure. Half of the arrows pointing towards its various parts came from blacked-out lines of text. It was clear that this was a military document, some secret aircraft or weapon. The creaking of chairs was audible across the room as people focused. Brigid turned to see the strange journalists leaning eagerly forward.
“Swamphenge,” one of them mumbled behind her.
“This is the time gate,” Nori said proudly. Again the flashing of cameras filled the room.
“I propose that whilst creating a timelike curve in spacetime might be an impossible task for a civilisation like ours, it may not be impossible to other civilisations. It may not even be difficult for them. Indeed, timelike curves may be a pre-existing part of the universe’s cosmic topology. That is to say, they were already here,” Nori announced. He ignored what Brigid thought was a good opportunity for thoughtful pause and moved quickly onto the next slide, this time depicting two triangles linked by curving arrows.
“What will be done for the traveller in time has already been done for the universe into which he, or she, is born. If a timelike curve can be described to the layman as a corridor between one time and the next, then the machine on the screen behind me can be likened to a door. It is not a time machine in the conventional sense. I do not expect to strap myself in and be catapulted into the past!” Nori joked. He let the journalists laugh again and smiled, nodding to some as if he knew them.
“Rather I expect I shall simply walk in one end and out of the other. This is not a time machine that can travel in any way it chooses, but a doorway that opens to a path that already exists, that has perhaps existed since the dawn of time.”
By now several students and journalists had raised their hands, anticipating the natural end to the lecture, or at least a space for questions.
“Yes?” Nori asked, pointing at someone near the back. Brigid turned to see a well-dressed man sitting alone at the centre of one of the back rows, his body partially silhouetted by the projector light. His face was overshadowed by an immense wide-brimmed hat he had angled downwards, as if wanting only to look out without risking anyone looking in, like an archer aiming from a secluded tower window. Brigid’s focus lingered on him for a moment before turning back to Nori, hearing the figure behind cracking his knuckles.
“You say other civilisations might have created these timelike curves that we can exploit. Is this an acknowledgement that you believe in extra-terrestrial life?” the man asked. Nori grinned. Brigid knew what was coming next.
“Of course, if you run the numbers it would be foolish not to believe in life on other worlds.”
“But if you don’t mind me saying, professor, is it not true that a reliance on alien technology is an easy way to get out of explaining something?” the man asked. Nori raised an uneasy eyebrow to the question, adjusting his jacket and moustache again. He tried to see the person better, but like Brigid, his view was obscured by the hat and the projector beam.
“I think the simple fact is that we will leave a lasting legacy on Earth, so why wouldn’t another civilisation have left their legacy among the stars?” Nori said.
“Thank you professor,” the man replied. Brigid turned to glance at him again as he leaned back, his angled hat now tilting upward, revealing a subtle smile and sharp nose. He turned almost imperceptibly toward Brigid, and for an unsettling moment she could see two yellowing eyes shining out from underneath the remaining shadow of his hat.
“Yes?” Nori asked, pointing toward someone on Brigid’s other side. She turned to see someone else had raised their hand now.
“If the machine works as you say it does, then doesn’t there need to be another of the same machine in the time you are visiting?” the young woman asked. Nori turned back to his slideshow and pointed at the triangle on the left.
“You are right in thinking that. If I were to activate this machine tomorrow, I could not hope to get back to today. More doors would need to be constructed in the future. We are the past to the travellers, a moment they will wish to visit. The dawn of time travel!” Nori announced. A handful of the journalists started clapping, and Brigid turned once again to the man in the wide hat. He was motionless. The clapping died down almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving Brigid with a growing awkward feeling as the silent lecture room became more and more uncomfortable. Around the room a few sparse groups of other students were joking amongst themselves and Nori was beginning to notice. She couldn’t tolerate it any more. Her hand shot into the air.
“Are you suggesting sir, that you have already built the machine you have described?” she asked.
“You have spoiled the big reveal,” Nori said, gesturing widely. “Yes. That is the announcement I was building toward today. I have made the machine before you, and I hope to activate it soon,” he admitted. Most of the crowd laughed, Nori frowned in confusion. Brigid could tell he was serious, that he had expected other people to be serious too.
“Would you not need a fuel source for such a machine?” she asked.
“Of course. And of course I am aware that the energy required is extraordinary, to the point of impossibility. But that is where the nature of the machine negates its own shortcomings. We may not have the fuel now, but a society in the future might. Just as we can freeze our bodies today in hopes they may be reborn tomorrow, so too can we build doors for time travellers that only they can open. From the present we may not have the brute force to open the door, but in the future someone might. The trick is to build the doorway, and wait for someone else to unlock the door,” Nori said. Brigid sunk back in her chair, resigning herself to the chatter of other students who weren’t taking Nori seriously.
The rest of the lecture felt much slower, with Nori answering a few more questions before going back over what he had said. Brigid sat in silence for the duration, adding to her drawing with one side of her mind but wondering about Nori’s sanity with the other.
It was dark outside when the lecture had finished, the campus pathways surrounded on all sides by sheets of fresh snow. Brigid stood against the freezing air as she waited for the professor, pulling her coat tight around herself. Nori was inside speaking to the journalists, but as soon as he saw that Brigid had not yet left he finished talking and headed out to speak to her.
“Brigid! Still here? How was it?” he asked.
“It was good,” Brigid said unconvincingly.
“You think I’m mad, don’t you?” Nori asked. He tucked his scarf in his jacket, fighting with it as it blew about in the wind.
“You can’t go back in time, sir,” Brigid said, “And what was with all the weirdos in the back?”
“Old friends, and I’ll have you know that only half of them are weirdos,” Nori whispered as one walked past, “Still up for an early start tomorrow?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“I know. Coffee, remember? I owe you one. And I feel you might have more questions I can answer better when we’re not both frozen. It’s positively cryogenic out here!” Nori announced. Brigid remembered the drawing in her notebook.
“Of course,” she said. There was an odd silence between the pair, as if they were in a play and had forgotten their lines. But it was not an uncomfortable silence, it was different. There was a warmth between them, an unspoken understanding or kinship. Nori stretched before breaking the silence.
“Eight okay, the one behind the old geology building?”
“Sure,” Brigid said.
The next morning was twice as cold as the night before, a glistening layer of frost covering almost everything. Brigid felt as if she was expanding in the sudden heat of the coffee shop doorway, metaphorical ice cracking and dissolving away from her frozen fingertips. Nori was already waiting inside with two drinks. He stood up, handing Brigid her cup.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Chai, walk and talk?” Nori replied. He had noticeably cleaned himself up, perhaps gelled back his unruly hair and attempted to straighten his suit. Brigid wondered why he didn’t look as smart at the lecture, if it was all a part of some long play he was writing in his head and he had no choice but to commit to the part of the crazed professor for any and all public events.
“So life is predetermined,” Brigid mused.
“What?”
“My drink. You knew what I would order,” she clarified, holding the door open. Nori stepped through, saying, “You have the same drink every week. I know the smell. I’ll miss it when you graduate. Masks the Monday Vodka quite well.” Brigid laughed lightly and followed him outside, walking beside him along the quiet path that curled through the campus.
“And it’s still warm.”
“Because you’re never late nor early, always on time,” Nori explained.
“A poor companion for a potential time traveller.”
“I wouldn’t say so,” Nori reassured her.
“And you’re always late. I had imagined I’d be waiting for you forever,” Brigid said. Nori took a sip of his drink and stopped by one of his banners for a second, smiling sadly.
“Perhaps I waste some of my time,” he said. They continued walking. Brigid thought about the other students and how they had laughed at his presentation.
The pair walked until they reached Nori’s office. It was a tall, square room, every wall covered in shelves upon shelves filled with artefacts and books. The remaining floor space was a labyrinth of heavy folders and boxes, old rugs obscured under piles of research.
“I see you’ve cleaned up,” Brigid said sarcastically, nudging aside a box to make space to sit. Nori had somehow managed to fit a green velvet sofa into his office alongside all the books, boxes and parts, and this too was overshadowed by overflowing shelves. Despite them being far above her head, Brigid felt the need to crouch to avoid hitting them. Nori didn’t stop to sit down, instead digging through the paperwork around his desk in search of something. Brigid looked at the familiar posters on the few sparse patches of available wall. One of them was a picture of a triangular UFO hovering above a patch of trees, with the words ‘Swamp gas?’ in large yellow font above it.
“Do you really believe all that stuff?” Brigid asked. Nori sighed.
“I do. I’m surprised you aren’t into it yourself, I’m sure that podcast you like talks about it often. It’s in the same place.”
“Mother swamps?” Brigid asked.
“That’s the one.”
“It’s just a writing podcast, no little green men.”
“Grey,” Nori corrected.
“Sorry.”
“Nothing to apologise for. No doubt you’ve heard the snickering in the classroom, rumours I talk to myself. It’s true, sometimes the best audience for an idea is yourself,” Nori said. Brigid nodded and watched as he moved around the cramped office, twisting and moving with practised precision. He stopped by a picture frame and lifted it.
“You know my early career was pocked with ridicule. Spooky Furukawa and his ghost books. It was very rare that I’d find someone to listen to my theories. But you know I don’t think anyone has it easy in the beginning, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Everything is impossible until somebody does it,” Nori said.
“But is there any real evidence for the paranormal? UFO’s, that sort of thing?” Brigid asked.
“That sort of thing? Is there any evidence for anything? Of course there isn’t if you don’t look, but some people have a way of ignoring what they don’t like. If it doesn’t agree with recent measurements, if it doesn’t fit the graph, some might just forget that it exists, as if they have a filter,” Nori explained.
“Anomalous results.”
“Exactly. So my belief in aliens became a running joke in the faculty. One Halloween Imran and Everett chased me around the staff canteen with rubber masks on, dressed as reptilian greys. There’s photos somewhere, I should show you some time.”
“That would be nice,” Brigid said. She waited for a few more minutes as the professor filled his coat pockets with notes and scraps of paper. He cleared some boxes out of the way of his desk and pulled out a large brown file, taking out what looked like a drawing and hurriedly folding it into an inside pocket. Brigid sat with a question burning at the back of her mind, drinking little sips of her drink through the plastic lid every few seconds, trying to distract herself from asking it. In truth she didn’t want to know the answer, but she couldn’t tolerate ambiguity.
“Last night, when you said you had built a time gate and were going to switch it on, that was a joke, right?” Brigid asked. Nori responded by raising a finger to his lips and shuffling around in mock-secrecy, leading Brigid silently out of his office and locking the door behind them.
The pair walked around to the back of the physics building, entering through a fire exit one floor below the main foyer. Nori opened the door and held it open for Brigid, before walking down a short concrete corridor to another door. Here he took out a crumpled piece of paper from his jacket pocket and straightened it. He keyed in a passcode with one hand whilst holding the paper, then pushed the door open, opening it to what looked like a warehouse with a low ceiling. Fluorescent lights flickered on as Nori walked ahead, spilling light in great circles on the concrete floor. The place was huge. All of Nori’s possessions were piled up in one far corner, and behind this was a jagged shape draped in a thick dust sheet. Nori looked at Brigid as he edged backwards into the corner, seemingly ignorant to her worried expression. In one swift motion he pulled the dust sheet off the thing and bowed. It was a triangle of dark metal, just like the diagram from the night before.
“It wasn’t a joke,” Brigid said.
“No.”
“You really built it.”
“A working copy, I hope,” Nori grinned.
“And did you make it yourself or use instructions?” Brigid said, regaining composure. She noticed an old computer keyboard haphazardly taped to one side of the thing, wires snaking up the other side.
“Bit of both. The blueprints I inherited were incomplete,” Nori explained. He slapped the triangle playfully, resting a hand on its ringing frame.
“Inherited?” Brigid questioned.
“A military man. William Bines. Good man. He was sworn to secrecy, not even supposed to have the paperwork, but he did have it, somehow, and he passed it onto me when he died, along with enough money to get the project going.”
“I’m sorry,” Brigid said.
“It’s alright. He had a good life, far as I can tell.”
“You didn’t know him?”
“No.”
“Then why did he give you the documents? Why did he leave you money?”
“He had heard of me, I did a little radio interview in America a few years ago,” Nori explained. Brigid felt that the explanation was missing something, but she was preoccupied with the time gate.
“So the American military has been building time machines?” she asked.
“No. Reverse engineering. They dug a spaceship up that had one of these inside.”
“Makes sense,” Brigid said dismissively.
“This isn’t my office Brigid, this is a sarcasm free zone.”
“Okay, when?”
“When what?”
“When did they dig up a time machine?”
“1947, three years before the Swamphenge crash.”
“I see,” Brigid said. Nori didn’t seem to notice her tone this time, instead busying himself with checking through his boxes.
“Last night’s lecture was a publicity stunt. I wanted people in the future to remember me, to want to know what happened this morning, so they will come back, bringing the time battery back with them. It’s the only way I can get power without waiting. I don’t even know what the fuel source will be, exotic matter perhaps, but I know I can’t get it now. But someone will one day, and they’ll have to carry it with them to walk through the gateway,” Nori explained. Brigid took a few seconds to process it, trying to get a glimpse of his paperwork. Nori had created a desk and table out of cardboard boxes, and had littered notes across them. Surprisingly he had added a proper desk lamp and a photo frame, in which was a grainy photograph of him stood in a diner somewhere, wearing an inflatable flying saucer hat and pointing giddily toward the alien depicted in its cockpit. He walked back to Brigid and started checking through his paperwork.
“That one’s green,” Brigid said, looking at the alien.
“He was ill, I suppose,” Nori joined in.
“Precious family memory?”
“My uncle.”
“I see. You have his huge obsidian eyes.”
“Thank you.”
“And his weird, lipless mouth.”
“Again, thanks,” Nori said.
“And his bulbous grey head.”
“The Furukawa forehead, they call it.”
“Do they now?”
“Yes. Now would you help me, I’ve lost my magazines.”
“The science ones?”
“No.”
“Naked ladies?”
“No.”
“Naked aliens?” Brigid asked with mock concern.
“Stock reports.”
“Whatever you say,” Brigid said. She began lifting the piles of paperwork, subconsciously straightening or organising them depending on how much effort it would be. Nori looked over and watched her for a moment, noting the apparent care with which she would move his things. Within a minute she had defaulted to unfolding essay corners and sorting things by type, moving swiftly through the piles like a machine. She caught him watching and held back her laughter, letting it out as bursts of exhalation through her nose.
“So you’re luring someone from the future to today?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“So you can steal a battery.”
“That’s right,” Nori said.
“A portable battery, that has enough power to tear open a hole in spacetime?” Brigid asked. She finished sorting out one of the bigger piles.
“It’s more of a dent than a hole. A spike. And it already exists.”
“I see.”
“And it’s not creating the spike, it’s accessing it. The corridor already exists, but the door to it is jammed.”
“Right. So once you’ve got this door open you just walk right through, to the future?” Brigid asked.
“No, to the past,” Nori said.
“And you believe this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. Any specific date?”
“What?” Nori said. He grinned and tugged a magazine loose from an untouched pile, sending it collapsing down onto the concrete floor.
“Got it!” he said.
“Is there a date you’re going back to?” Brigid asked again. She stepped over the recently toppled pile and shook her head disapprovingly at it.
“No specifics. Just the year.”
“Go on.”
“1950,” Nori said. Brigid nodded to herself knowingly.
“The Swamphenge crash.”
“I want to see what really happened,” Nori explained.
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