Part 13 (1/2)
”Of what?” Fatboy asked.
”Of what the h.e.l.l do you think?” Tane answered a little testily, his head still throbbing.
Rebecca said, ”Easy, Tane. Of the gamma-ray time-message-sender device, Fats. I have a feeling that we are going to need this, sooner than we thought.”
”How soon?” Fatboy asked, but n.o.body answered.
Rebecca came back into the control room and, there being no spare seat, sat on Fatboy's knee. Tane stared out of the viewing window of the sub. He said, ”I think I have a name for it.”
Rebecca looked up. ”Yes?”
”Well, it's like a telephone that sends text messages through time, right?”
”Well, sort of.”
The name had floated into Tane's mind in between throbs of pain. Tele Tele was ancient Greek for ”distance,” and was ancient Greek for ”distance,” and phone phone was ancient Greek for ”speech.” So a ”telephone” was a machine that let you speak across a distance. The ancient Greek word for ”time” was was ancient Greek for ”speech.” So a ”telephone” was a machine that let you speak across a distance. The ancient Greek word for ”time” was chronos. chronos.
”It's a Chronophone.”
Rebecca said, ”I like it.”
”Wouldn't it be a Chronograph?” Fatboy asked. ”I mean, it's more like a telegraph, sending Morse code, than a telephone.”
”Maybe, but a Chronograph is a kind of watch, so I think Chronophone is best,” Tane insisted.
”Actually, Fatboy is right,” Rebecca said.
”Okay, whatever.” Tane shrugged and turned away.
There was an awkward pause. Fatboy coughed.
After a moment, Rebecca said brightly, ”Chronophone will do fine. But what a paradox.”
Tane groaned, ”Oh, here we go. I suppose you want me to kill Grandad again.”
”You killed Grandad?!” Fatboy asked.
”No, Fatboy, don't worry about it. What paradox?”
”Think about it.” Rebecca's eyes were wide. ”We're in the middle of sending ourselves plans for the Chrono...phone, right, from the future.”
”This much we know already.”
”But where did we get the plans from?”
”Which 'we' are you talking about?” Tane asked.
”Okay,” Rebecca said. ”Call the future Tane and Rebecca 'them.' Now, where did they get the plans from? From us, right?”
”From us?” Fatboy queried. ”How did we send the plans to the future?”
Rebecca sighed with exasperation. ”We didn't send them. We just hung on to them. Think about it. Tane and I are the future Tane and Rebecca, just not yet. So future Tane and Rebecca get the plans from us, but where did we get them from? From them! From them!”
”So who had the plans in the first place?” Fatboy asked.
”Exactly!” Rebecca thundered, leaving Fatboy no more the wiser.
”And this has something to do with Grandad?” Fatboy asked, and couldn't understand why Tane and Rebecca got the giggles.
”The plans must have come from somewhere,” Fatboy insisted.
”Maybe this is one of those kinds of questions that our brains just can't comprehend,” Rebecca said, wiping laughter tears from her eye. ”Like the infinite size of s.p.a.ce. Or what existed before the universe.”
”Or why in automatic cars you pull the gear lever backward to go forward, and forward to go backward,” Tane contributed, and even Fatboy started laughing, in a confused kind of way.
Eventually Fatboy said, ”Okay. So I don't really get all this paradox stuff, and I don't understand where the plans for the Chronophone came from, but did you guys ever think about what a weird coincidence this whole thing is?”
Rebecca, still sitting on his knee, twisted her head around to look at him. ”Yeah, I know.”
She idly lifted off his cowboy hat and put it on.
Tane asked, ”What do you mean?
Fatboy hesitated. ”Well...”
Rebecca said, ”He means that us, well, you really, Tane, thinking up the idea of receiving messages from the future, just at the right time to stop Dr. Green and her Chimera Project, is a very unlikely coincidence. Right, Fats?”
Fatboy nodded. ”Did anything else unusual happen, when you thought up the idea?”
Tane asked, ”Like what?”
”Like, did you see anything, hear anything...”
Tane shut his eyes, remembering. ”There was a shooting star.”
Rebecca looked up sharply. ”What?”
”The moment that I thought of the idea of messages from the future, I saw a shooting star. That's it. Nothing else.”
Fatboy shook his head. ”Maybe it wasn't an ordinary shooting star. Maybe the shooting star was actually a thought from the future hurtling through the atmosphere in some cosmic ray from the depths of the universe just before embedding itself in your brain.”
Tane said, ”That's nuts.”
Rebecca was already adding it to the notebook where she kept the message dates and times. She spoke as she wrote. ”Please remember to send a shooting star above West Auckland on the twenty-seventh of October at exactly nine-fifty-three p.m. That was the right time, wasn't it?”
”Close enough.”