It is not possible to travel in time in the way H.G. Wells envisaged. It causes too many paradoxes. However, in the mind, it is possible to go to any place and any time.
Xavier leant back in his chair and took an improbably large swig of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He said, “In this very pub, according to legend, Disraeli and Gladstone, both of whom went on to become prime ministers in the nineteenth century, used to drink. Disraeli was very clever and witty, and Gladstone was just Gladstone.”
Xavier hooked a passing waitress called Tilly with his cane to order another bottle. This was obviously a two-bottle story or more. “As young men, these famous individuals fought a duel over a young lady called Eliza Trollope. And it is recorded that Eliza’s response to their derring-do was to say, ‘These fine gentlemen haven’t got a clue how to behave, I won’t have neither of ‘em.’ And she didn’t.”
“If only,” and here Xavier had a look in his eye which suggested a story to come if I could wheedle it out of him, “if only there were some way to verify history.”
At this point, he got a phone call from his father, so I will take advantage of this hiatus to say that while Xavier is a technologist, his father is a physicist. Once in a while, he tries to find a practical application for his father’s theoretical work. I caught the phrase “sub specie aeternitatis” in the conversation. “In the mirror of eternity.”
A bottle and a half later, Xavier was explaining to me as best he could the project he was working on. It was simply (or very complexly perhaps) a device for looking back into the past to ascertain whether our view of history is accurate. He even invited me to a private viewing of this device the following week before its public unveiling to the Royal Society in October.
I was excited at the prospect despite my misgivings. I have always taken Xavier’s technological expertise with a pinch of salt. He is an amusing companion and has an apparently infinite capacity for fine wine, but I was a little sceptical about whether this “Mirror of Eternity” would actually work.
The procedure was that I had to take a pill beforehand and wait for thirty minutes. The time didn’t drag as Xavier talked charmingly and engagingly about the book he was reading, a show he had seen, and a new pub he thought we could visit later that evening.
Then I was ushered into the presence of the Mirror itself. In a plain white room with just one chair stood what looked like a plain flat-screen television. The controls were complex, but Xavier talked me through them before leaving me alone in the room. Using the time controls, I chose a point in time, and using the geo setting, I chose a location.
I took a leap back seventy years. In an underground bunker, two individuals were playing cards. It was difficult to see through the clouds of cigar smoke. However, I immediately recognised the faces of Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler. Hitler was offended by the smoke, and he was continually giving fake little coughs and waving the smoke away. Churchill seemed impervious to this and carried on smoking enthusiastically. By a slight adjustment, I was able to see their hands. Hitler was bluffing with a pair of nines while Churchill had three tens. In the middle of the table were cards with the names of countries on them. Churchill had just gambled France, and Hitler threw in Poland and Austria. Churchill considered seriously and toyed briefly with cards labelled India and Burma. In the end, he obviously felt that gambling the colonies would be a step too far, so he threw his hand in. I tried to yell at him. In fact, I did yell at him, but of course, he couldn’t hear.
“OK, you win this time. We will be out of Dunkirk by Tuesday.”
* * *
I googled Disraeli and Gladstone and lurked for a while in Ye Old Boar pub in the early nineteenth century, but to no avail. The only duels between those two seem to have been battles of wits in which the worthy and wordy Gladstone went down in the first round.
I went further back and further afield too. In a magnificent villa in Tuscany, I saw Julius Caesar reclining on a magnificent bed. He was very old, and it seemed that he was dying of old age. His lifelong friend Brutus was crying helplessly and inconsolably at his bedside. Some words were exchanged, but their Latin was so dreadful I found it impossible to understand.
* * *
I went back (or forward in this case) to a time and place where English was spoken. It was a desperate situation. Bloody Hell, it was desperate. I was in despair for a start. Everyone I could see was in despair or blissfully unaware of what was to come.
Perhaps the old saw is true: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you really haven’t understood the situation.” And for all my awareness of the desperate situation, I was perfectly safe in the twenty-first century. Everyone I could see in London in 1945 was as far from safe as it is possible to be.
Hitler’s atom bomb was going to be delivered to a London address via V2 in the next week. And after that, the world was going to be his radioactive oyster. Everyone I could see walking around the streets, trying to live their lives normally under extraordinary circumstances, would be dead. I could do nothing. I could only watch them through the mirror of eternity.
The crowning proof that the Nazis had the atom bomb had come via the BBC that afternoon. It was a categorical official denial. Up to then, people had only known about the bomb through rumour and the broadcasts of “Lord Haw Haw.” It was illegal to listen to Nazi propaganda, but everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who did. Now the idea was in the public domain, and everyone in the pub was talking about the bomb as an imminent threat or dismissing it as ‘just another big bomb.’ They had seen bombs which could bring the house down in one go, and with any luck, it wouldn’t be their house, or they would be in the shelter when it fell.
According to the German broadcasts, the Third Reich had given proof they had the bomb to the governments of the UK, USA, and USSR, and they had said they would demonstrate its power on London unless Britain unconditionally surrendered. The deadline had come and gone. Of course, I was safe, but I was also in no position to alter events. I went back to the present.
In Ye Old Boar, Xavier was making a deep impression on the Pinotage Special Reserve. “You see, ‘the mirror of eternity’ was just an expression. “sub specie aeternitatis” is what many people, not you obviously, but many people, use to sum up how insignificant phenomena in this world are. “sub specie aeternitatis” your life or mine or even the fate of Bristol Rovers is not as important as we might think. Then it got me thinking. I actually tried to construct a mirror of eternity which would enable me to look into the past and verify history. Time travel itself of course is impossible due to Gibson’s Paradox.”
“Gibson’s?”
“Well, it was certainly somebody’s, excuse me wench.”
While Xavier taps a barmaid with his cane, I will mention that I have often wondered why Xavier doesn’t get thrown out of pubs more often. “Is it Gibson who postulated that if you send a signal back in time from a machine in order to switch the machine off, it would therefore not send the signal and therefore not be switched off?”
“Well, Xavier,” she gave a weary smile, “that sounds like Xavier’s paradox to me. Another bottle?”
After pouring out two generous glasses of wine, Xavier continued, “However, the breakthrough came when I happened to take some LSD. I say LSD, it was actually a concoction of my own devising.”
“Xavier, you are not a chemist. Was it just LSD?”
“No, you’re right, I’m no chemist. It was LSD. I bought it from a little man in Clapham. He’s very good. Of course, I was taking a few other things at the time, and I added them to what we chemists call ‘the mixture.’ And then I found that the mirror of eternity worked until the stuff wore off, of course. I know you are unhappy about the victims of the nuclear attack on London in 1945 because you cannot do anything for them.”
“What can I do about this unhappiness then, Xavier?”
“I am doing it,” he raised his glass and indicated that I should do likewise. “This particular grape has the power to give you perspective.”
“Just this one?”
“Well, it is a lifetime’s study. We can’t expect to get through every grape in one night. And one other thing, next time, go to Addington. Go to Addington a month after the atomic bomb.”
* * *
The controls of the Mirror of Eternity had a “points of interest” setting, so I went to the Dunscratchin Pet Cemetery in Addington. This was as close to London as anyone was likely to go, I thought, but I had reckoned without Ernst Rohm. I immediately recognised Hitler and Churchill. The British leader had been forced to eschew his cigars but probably thought this a small price to pay for the unlimited power his Führer was offering him over the British Empire.
A group of Storm Troopers were dressed in anti-radiation suits. It made them look more like Darth Vader’s stormtroopers than Rohm’s, to be honest. They entrained, and I followed them. I reflected that the radiation wasn’t going to affect me after all. I identified Hitler’s faithful right-hand man immediately because his anti-radiation suit was at least twice as big as any of his hunky followers. He had almost unlimited power to match his girth after that unfortunate altercation with the SS in 1934. It was rumoured that he kept Heinrich Himmler on as an office boy and occasional (allegedly unwilling) sexual partner.
Although Hitler had sufficient regard to his safety to keep well away from the smoking ruins of London, Rohm said that he felt the hand of history on his shoulder and was prepared to deputise for his Führer on this occasion, taking the salute outside the remains of the Houses of Parliament – or “relic of decadent democracy” as he preferred to call it. Rohm’s speech was incomprehensible (with apologies to any German speakers among my readers). The view was eloquent enough. In every direction, the city had been levelled. Overhead there was a squadron of Spitfires with new German markings. They were braving the radiation to make a point.
As I used the altitude setting to join the lead plane, I expected to see fat Herman in the cockpit. What I saw was a sleek fit Herman Goering reliving his glory days as a fighter pilot. The flight started doing manoeuvres that the Spitfire is definitely not designed to do and getting away with it too. The last thing I saw was a big smile on Goering’s lips as he said – apparently to me but that was impossible – “next time New York.” My ears were ringing with him singing “We’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island too.”
* * *
There followed a pause as Xavier was arrested for possession of a banned substance. He tried in vain to convince the court that he was conducting scientific research and received a massive fine and a suspended sentence. I met him in the antechamber to the courtroom among various drunks, child molesters, and licence fee dodgers. He wasn’t going to discuss the case. He was going to discuss the cat. He was under the impression that Gibson had tortured cats until they confessed that they felt very uncertain about everything. It was a toss-up whether to tell him that it was Schrödinger and the exact nature of the experiment or to let it go.
“In any case,” he said, taking a large swig from a hip flask, “he was entirely wrong. You don’t alter the nature of phenomena by observing them. It’s a solipsism.”
He gave me a very broad hint as to where I should go next when he was back in funds.
* * *
It was a cold day in Moscow in March 1933, although I couldn’t feel it. The room in the Kremlin was furnished in an austere style. The walls were virtually undecorated apart from a portrait of a young Joseph Stalin bordered with a black ribbon. This commemorated his untimely death in 1918 when he bravely or accidentally took a bullet from Fanya Kaplan which was intended for Lenin.
The other wall decoration was a map which showed the USSR had incorporated most of Asia with the exception of Ceylon. This was drawn to my attention by one of the three men in the room. This was Victor Serge. Fortunately for me (my Russian is on a par with my German) his presence meant the discussion was mainly conducted in French.
“So in conclusion, the government has asked for admission to the USSR and outlined this program of economic assistance.”
The other two men looked cursorily at the paperwork, turned to the bottom line, frowned, and then shrugged.
“Well, it will have to go to the Central Committee, but realistically this is a small price to pay for terminating the British Empire.” Lenin seemed grimly satisfied with the outcome but there was another problem occupying his mind. He turned to the other man in the room, “OK Leon, Germany.”
The People’s Commissar for War, Lev Davidovich Trotsky, couldn’t resist standing up. A look from Lenin said loud and clear, “Just the facts, we don’t need a speech.”
“The problem we all know. Together the Social Democrats and the Communist Party outnumber the Nazis. Hitler can never come to power. However, the Social Democrats have been selling their principles wholesale. They betrayed the revolution of 1919, and they have sought to have Rosa Luxemburg assassinated on five separate occasions before she sought asylum here. So how are we to unite against the Nazis, and can we trust the SDP to fight them anyway?”
He waited for an answer, but the others knew him too well, so he continued.
“Over the last six months, a steady stream of members have been leaving the CP to join the Social Democrats. In all, about ten thousand. Need I tell you that they were doing this under our instructions? On Tuesday, Ernst Thälmann will propose to the German CP conference that the organisation be dissolved and members should aid the Social Democrats to resist the Nazis. We calculate the Social Democrats – who have been calling for this measure – will find it hard to oppose it. Within a month, we should be able to present the German people with something they have never seen before. Social Democrats with backbone.”
There was a lot of discussion about how this could be achieved, but I didn’t need to listen to it.
* * *
Forward to Tuesday. A packed hall in Berlin. Armed guards from the Red Front patrolled outside and kept the stormtroopers at bay. Few people could resist the rhetoric of Thälmann when he was in full flow, but in the event, he didn’t need to persuade the conference. The guest speaker, who had been sent on a sealed train from exile in Russia, was Rosa Luxemburg. Trotsky had persuaded her, God alone knew how, to support the liquidation of the German Communist Party for the greater good. The subsequent election was a foregone conclusion. In panic, Britain and America had poured millions into the Nazi Party funds, but it was no use. President Thälmann applied to join the USSR by the end of the year. And the economic package he suggested was one nobody needed to frown over. Hitler went back to house painting.
“You see,” said Xavier waving a wine bottle as if he were conducting an orchestra. “Britain has always been part of the USSR. You can’t change history just by going back and looking at it.” He held up the bottle in a signal to the barmaid that it was time for another.
