Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business LMB Onevision: A Remarkable Encounter

Elizabeth Bogg awoke with a start as the train came to a halt. Slightly confused, she looked about the private car to see that - although her fiance's valet still sat across from her - her fiance himself was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh! I must have fallen asleep. Where has William disappeared off to?"

The valet looked at Elizabeth. "Master William has retired to the club car, my lady. He asked that I remain here in case you should require any assistance."

Elizabeth stretched, stifling a bit of a yawn. "Ohhhhh! I'm so tired. Where are we, in any case?"

"Leicester Station, my lady."

"Only Leicester? Oh, I can't wait to get to Scarborough to finally get this holiday underway."

Just then, through the glass door, Elizabeth spied her fiance approaching down the aisle with another man in tow. He slid the car door open.

"Ah, you're awake, my dear!" William said brightly. "Smashing! Tell me, darling, would you be horribly put out if this chap I've met were to join us in our car for a bit? We were just speaking in the club car and, you see, it seems there's been a bit of a mix up with his ticketing. They have accidentally given his berth away."

"Oh, how horrible." Elizabeth looked at the blonde man standing behind her husband. The man grinned apologetically. He was dressed somewhat formally, in a waistcoat, and was holding a rather large white parcel beneath his arm. Elizabeth thought he cut quite a dashing figure, actually - his pleasant features made all the more so by a very congenial smile.

"No, no... of course I wouldn't mind, dear... by all means. We have the extra room, and I would hate the thought of anyone having to stand for this entire trip."

"Wonderful! Right this way, Mr. Fuddle."

Elizabeth started at the sound of his name as the man entered, taking the seat next to her fiance's valet. William sat down beside her.

"I'm sorry..." she said, as the man placed his parcel at his feet, "...but did my fiance just call you...?"

"Fuddle, yes." the man said, looking up and smiling as the train again began moving. "Quite the coincidence, I know. Your fiance and I have just spent the greater part of the last hour trying to determine exactly how it is that we are related. It isn't everyday that you meet another Fuddle. Isn't that so, Mr. Fuddle?"

"Indeed... Mr. Fuddle." William laughed.

"Why, how delightful!" Elizabeth declared. "And have the both of you determined that you are, in fact, relations?"

"Well, it appears that if it is so," William said, the man nodded along, "it must be very distantly. I'm afraid that there isn't a single member of my line - at least to my knowledge - with the name of 'Phineas'."

"Phineas? Oh, is that your given name? I must admit, Mr. Fuddle, 'Phineas' is a name of which I've always been quite fond."

"Why thank you, madam. It was a dear affection of my mother's, as well. I'm afraid, however, that you now have me at a bit of a disadvantage."

"Oh, I apologize..." she shot a slightly annoyed glance at William, "I would have thought William would have pre-introduced me. I am Elizabeth Bogg."

"Charmed."

"So do you travel on holiday, as well?"

"No," William interjected, "Mr. Fuddle is on a work assignment. He is writer."

"Oh!" Phineas demurred. "I'm afraid your fiance is overstating my situation a bit. Unfortunately, I've never found that I have the creativity necessary to write my own work. Instead, I've found it more rewarding to... hmmm... rewrite the works of others."

"Oh, so you're more of an editor?" Elizabeth asked.

"In so many words. Only time will tell whether I find any degree of success, though. It has been a difficult road. Although I do have great faith that this trip will finally yield the result I'm looking for."

"Is that what your parcel contains, then?" Elizabeth indicated the box at Phineas' feet. "A manuscript? How exciting... who wrote it?"

"Elizabeth!" William upbraided his fiance. "You mustn't pry so."

Phineas laughed, reassuring the two. "No, no... that's quite all right. But, no, I'm afraid it isn't a manuscript - rather, it is merely a tool of my trade. The key to the success of this endeavor, if you will."

"I'm not certain I follow you." Elizabeth said.

"Tell me," Phineas said, leaning slightly forward, "are either of the two of you familiar with the works of the author, H.G. Wells?"

William gave a look of distaste. "Unfortunately, yes. No offense meant if he is an associate of yours, but I cannot stand that sort of serialized popular fiction. Elizabeth on the other hand...'

"...simply adores him!" Elizabeth interrupted. "Oh, Mr. Fuddle, please tell me that you know him."

"We were... briefly acquainted, yes, but I cannot say that I 'know' him, per se. However, I only mention the man by way of explaining the type of work that I endeavor to rewrite. You are familiar, I assume, Ms. Bogg, with Wells' novel, 'The Time Machine'?"

"Of course! I read it even as it was first serialized in the New Review."

"Yes, well, you see... as popular as that particular novel was, I feel as though it suffered - quite liberally - from some rather grievous errors in its logic."

"Really?" Elizabeth's interest was piqued. "Do explain."

"Oh, Elizabeth, Mr. Fuddle hasn't the time to delve into every last nicety of his profession."

Phineas continued to grin. "I'm afraid that the other Mr. Fuddle does have a point, Ms. Bogg. It is a rather complex conundrum I face. Hmmm... perhaps I could explain it by means of a hypothetical."

"Yes," Elizabeth said, quite interested, "please go on."

"All right." Phineas closed his eyes for a moment as if considering his words, then opened them again and began. "Imagine, if you will, the device described in Wells' novel... the titular 'machine'. You have read the book... what impression were you left with as to the function of the machine?"

"Why... to travel through time, of course."

"At a surface level, yes... but therein lies the difficulty I find. What is time? If you are to believe the model put forth by Wells, it is an immutable line from two points - straight... unwavering... fixed."

"Do you mean to suggest otherwise?"

"Yes..." Phineas' face grew more serious, "This - I'm afraid - is an overly simplistic model that limits the possibilities. If such a model were true - nothing could ever be changed. This is a child's view of time."

"Quite appropriate for a child's book wouldn't you say?" William laughed.

"William.. really!" Elizabeth chided her fiance and turned back to Phineas. "Mr. Fuddle. I'm not entirely certain I understand your point. Surely, all works in the popular genres have elements of the fantastic in them. Verne... Haggard... all popular fiction, really - if held under that degree of scrutiny - would fail to meet such a standard."

Phineas looked at the pair with a sudden melancholy. For a moment, it almost seemed as though his very eyes would well up. He took a deep breath and continued. "Imagine, for a moment, that the Traveler in Wells' book were somehow unencumbered by the machine itself. Somehow - let us say by the very exposure to the chronal waves he had passed through - the ability to traverse time had been imbued in the man, himself."

"All right..."

"Imagine the capability of such a man. He could, through his very willpower, travel to the past... the future... whenever he chose."

Elizabeth bristled. "I admit, though fantastic, my mind has a difficult time imagining such a man."

"It is merely a hypothetical, and almost peripheral to the core idea. What I really mean to impress upon you is the degree of responsibility that would fall to such a man. If nothing in this world could divorce him from the imbued power to travel time... would you say that such a man might have a responsibility to ensure that certain things abhorrent to mankind - things which could be prevented... wars... famines... deaths - wouldn't you say that if a man could prevent such things... that he should?"

"Mr. Fuddle..." William interjected, "I fear that this conversation may be straying a bit in the territory of morbidity."

"No, no," Elizabeth protested, "I find this line of discussion fascinating. I must admit, Mr. Fuddle, when you and my fiance had arrived at the car, I was quite exhausted, but this conversation seems to have given me an incredible second wind. Please... continue..."

Phineas pursed his lips. "In my rewritten story... a man - such as the one I describe - did indeed try to prevent these things... only to find himself prevented at every turn. He took modern weaponry to the past to turn the tide of battles, and he found that that the ammunition had been damaged. He prevented a key assassination... only to find that the target died a day later of natural causes. No matter what this man did... somehow time found a way to course correct and reassume the straight line form that Wells described."

"Ah... then perhaps Wells did predict the correct model."

"No!"

William and Elizabeth both jumped back slightly in spite of themselves at Phineas' sudden outburst. Feeling the sudden silence almost tangibly, Phineas continued.

"No... though it took almost ten years... the man in my story did finally discover a way to change things. It was in a very dark corner of his mind where the idea first took root but - once planted - it grew into the most glorious tree imaginable. Tell me... what is the one event in a person's life that sets all others in motion."

William glared at his namesake. He realized the mistake he had made in inviting this man back to the car. "I must confess... I do not know, sir, and - what's more - I fear that this conversation has taken a rather unsavory..."

"His birth!" Elizabeth exclaimed.

Phineas smiled. "Yes. Yes, my dear Ms. Bogg... his birth. Now... if a man were to prevent that event from happening, surely no sane person could claim that time were immutable."

"But... no..." Elizabeth knotted her brow, "I don't follow your logic. If a man - a time traveler - were to go back to prevent his own birth... then he would never be born to grow into the man who would travel back to... ah, my head is swimming with all this."

"Ah... and such is the fallacy of Wells' model of time. True, such events would create the paradoxical loop you describe... if time were merely linear. But, what if - like the glorious tree of the idea I described - such an event did not create a paradox? What if the very action - the elimination of himself before his own birth - created a separate branch of this temporal tree? One in which - free from the limit of not being able to alter the history of his own line - the man could now live in a separate time line... one in which he has carte blanche to alter anything, no longer bound by the history of his own?"

Elizabeth beamed. "What a fascinating man you are, Mr. Fuddle! I feel you do yourself a great disservice when you state that you lack creativity. William... if all of your long lost relations have such fascinating ideas, I insist - after we are married - that we begin traveling by rail more frequently. You have, however, left one very important element of this story untold, Mr. Fuddle. How exactly would this man go about preventing his own birth?"

"Ah..." Phineas took a deep breath, "Here is where we must depart from the modern conventions of Wells and Verne and go a bit further into the literary tradition... to Poe."

William's face soured. "Sir, I will ask you not to delve into such dark..."

"Murder!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "He travels back and murders himself as a child."

"That would not assure a world without him." Phineas said dryly.

"Then his parents... he murders his parents!"

"All right!" William stood up. "That is quite enough of this! Sir, I fear I have made a grave error in inviting you into our car. I apologize for your ticketing misfortune, but I must ask you to return to the club car."

Phineas stood up as well, bending over to pick up his parcel. "I apologize, Mr. Fuddle... it was not my intention to give offense. I was merely engaging in some literary banter with your fiance."

"Oh, William... please... I am as much to blame as poor Mr. Fuddle. It wasn't his fault."

"No, no..." Phineas interrupted, "Your fiance is correct, Ms. Bogg... I should leave. Before I do, however, I fear I left one question you asked unanswered... the contents of my parcel. Would you still like to know?"

"Yes, very much so."

Phineas nodded and turned to William's valet. "Boaz, would you do me the service on drawing the blinds and locking the door please?"

William's face grew red. "H... how do you know the name of my manservant?"

"Boaz Yakin? Oh, we are old acquaintances. When did we first meet, again, Boaz?"

The valet, drawing the blinds, said, "74 AD, sir. You saved my life in the battle of Masada."

"Ah, yes. My apologies for asking me you serve my father for so many years. I trust, in a moment, it will all have been worth it." Phineas let the box fall away, pulling out the 41st century disintegrator.

William and Elizabeth stared at the man before them in disbelief. William shouted, "Are you both mad? What the devil is that supposed to...?"

Phineas pulled the trigger and watched as his parents froze for a moment... then faded to nothing. He closed his eyes, half unsure of what the next moment would yield. After a moment, however, still feeling his own corporeality, he opened them again. He looked at the empty seats before him. "What the devil, indeed, father... what the devil, indeed."

Boaz looked at Phineas, "I assume that you have achieved your desired result, sir?"

Phineas sighed. "It would appear so, Boaz. With my parents deceased before I was conceived, it would seem that I have just done the impossible - I have created a new timeline."

"Very good, sir. So, where shall we be traveling next?"

"Ha!" Phineas laughed with just the slightest hint of mania. "Anywhere we wish, Boaz... anywhere we wish! After all... I have just created the most remarkable world!"