The Inheritance Paradox
Four (Eugene’s Story)
EUGENE OPENED HIS EYES to find himself in his Corvair. He was a little disoriented but didn’t feel drunk any longer. His immediate thought was that he must have stumbled to the car and slept off the alcohol. He had no idea what time it was. Bits of a strange conversation crossed his mind and were quickly dismissed.
He put the key in the ignition and started the car.
Where are you going?
“I’m getting out of here. Nothing here is any of my business. I got drunk, had weird dreams, and now I’m leaving.” Somehow his voice didn’t assure him. It was too strange. He couldn’t possibly have been sent back in time. He looked up into the rearview mirror, ready to put the car in reverse. A flash of red caught his eye as Lynn rushed past the corner of the bar with three men close behind.
“Oh, shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Eugene declared, using the strongest language he was capable of. He frantically looked around the vehicle and grabbed his baseball bat. He jumped out of the car with it still running and dashed toward the men closing on Lynn.
The first was near enough to grab her arm and tear the red jacket off her shoulder. Eugene screamed a wordless epithet and swung the bat at the assailant. It was neither a well-timed nor well-aimed hit. He hit the assailant a glancing blow on the shoulder. He released Lynn’s arm and turned to face Eugene with a yell.
Strike one.
He needed to make the next swing count before the other two reached him. He couldn’t realign himself but swung in an upward arc. It slid between the attacker’s legs and he doubled over, nearly pulling the bat out of Eugene’s hands.
Foul balls!
The second guy was launching himself in a kick aimed at Eugene’s head. Eugene swung the bat back as the foot grazed his forehead. He connected solidly with the guy’s off knee. He heard and could feel the crack as the guy crumpled to the ground.
It’s a hit!
The third thug apparently assumed the other two could take care of the idiot with a bat. Instead, he grabbed Lynn before she could get out of the way. She struggled against him a few steps away from Eugene. Eugene jumped over the guy he’d just crippled. Lynn slapped her assailant just as Eugene swung the bat. He was afraid he’d hit her and pulled his swing slightly. Nonetheless, he smashed the bat into the side of the rapist’s head. He could feel the head cave in and blood spurt from the side.
Home run!
Lynn looked at the falling thug and then at her hand before she saw Eugene in front of her with the bat. She started to back away, but Eugene reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward his car as the kneecapped thug and the neutered thug tried to get to their feet. He opened the passenger door and pushed Lynn into the car, right on top of the various papers, books, and the coffee mug on the seat. He wished he’d cleaned it.
Eugene jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed behind him as he put the car in reverse, floored the accelerator, and popped the clutch. The first guy he’d hit was headed toward them and Eugene backed into him as the tires squealed. Then he raced out of the parking lot and down the street.
“What? What are you doing?” Lynn shouted. “Who are you?”
“Taxi. Where to, lady?” Eugene quipped.
“Are you serious? I was just attacked in a parking lot, and a bat-swinging maniac kidnapped me!” she cried. She was panting and could hardly speak through her panting.
She could probably have you arrested.
“No! Really?” Eugene couldn’t believe his rotten luck. “Hospital? Are you hurt?”
“Hurt? I don’t know. My jacket is a wreck. I don’t think I have more than a bruise on my arm,” she said. Tears began to flow from her eyes. She was in shock. “I can’t believe they just left me while I was in the restroom.”
“Just tell me where to take you home. Maybe choose some better friends next time.”
“Right on Holmes,” she sobbed. “Are you going to… rape me?”
“No! God, no! Those guys in the parking lot… They’re the ones who followed you out of the bar. I’m Eugene. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m glad you’re okay,” Eugene said, the adrenaline beginning to bleed from his body. He could feel his heart still thumping in his ears.
Lynn sniffled and turned to look at him, pulling the coffee mug out from under her.
“The last guy who told me he wouldn’t hurt me broke my heart.”
“I’m afraid I’ve done that before. I’ve sworn to never do it again,” Eugene said. “I’ll never put a woman through that misery again so long as I live.”
“You mean you actually learned your lesson?” she asked, huffing a partial laugh. “The guy who broke my heart went on to break the heart of the girl he cheated on me with.”
“Learning my lesson came too late to do me any good. Just tell me where to take you, Lynn.”
“How do you know my name?” she said, crowding the door and looking for the handle.
Now you’ve done it.
“I… uh… I heard it in the bar. I’m sure that was where I heard it.”
She doesn’t remember you from the bar.
“Just let me off here. I can make it home by myself.”
“I’m not a stalker. The truth is…”
You can’t tell her the truth!
“An old guy tipped me off. I was just in my car, and this fellow came up in a panic and said somebody was going to rape Lynn. Please help. I didn’t have time to think because I saw the guys follow you toward the parking lot. I just ran to… um… you know. I’m not a stalker, I promise.”
“Right. Take the next left and I’m in the second building on the right,” Lynn said. She wasn’t sure why she trusted him, but it was true that he’d just saved her. He was just a little weird. What was new? She attracted weird guys. Apparently, she sought them out. That was certainly the case with Guru Ma Mahama.
Eugene pulled to the curb and jumped out of the car to run around and open her door. She slipped out of the car and edged away from him.
“I won’t follow you,” he said. “I mean, I just wanted to get you home safely. I’d like to see you again, though. You know, just to be sure you’re okay. Would you like to go to dinner next Saturday?”
“That was smooth,” she said, backing toward the door of the apartment building. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. I’m definitely going to find better friends who don’t abandon me in strange places.”
“Maybe even avoid strange places,” Eugene said. “Well, good… goodnight. I’m glad you’re safe.”
He headed back to the driver’s door as she walked up the steps. He wasn’t going to escort her to the door as skittish as she was, and there didn’t seem to be any additional dangers lurking around. He still waited by the car until she was at the door. She turned and looked at him.
“What time and where?” she called back. He almost missed what she was talking about.
“Six-thirty at La Paloma on Saturday,” he quickly called back.
“Clean your car!”
She went through the door as Eugene stared agape. He had a date.
Oh, Wells isn’t going to like this.
Eugene drove to a shopping center where he knew the police didn’t usually check overnight vehicles. He could spend the night there and then start trying to put his life together in the morning. He was going to need a place to stay and a job. He might only live a few weeks, but next week he had a date!
Once he leaned back in the seat, a sudden surge of disorientation hit him again.
Eugene’s disorientation lasted only a few seconds, and his eyes flashed open in the strange hospital laboratory he’d found himself in before. He was strapped down with his head once again in a clamp.
“Hey! What gives? Why am I strapped down like I’m in A Clockwork Orange? Are you that crazy doctor?” he screamed.
“Relax. I just didn’t want you jumping around while we’re downloading your data. That does it. We’ll release things now, but you might want to stay seated. This sometimes leaves people a little woozy,” the doctor said.
“People? How many have you brought here?” Eugene asked.
“It’s still experimental,” the doctor said.
Just you and him.
“You got woozy?”
“Every time. You’re doing well.”
“Who are you, anyway, doctor?”
“Wells. This is just a waypoint between times. I’ll get you back as soon as I patch you up.” Wells stopped and looked at a device Eugene could only catch a glimpse of. Wells turned and looked Eugene up and down. “You aren’t injured. Just a scrape on your forehead. Why not?”
“I didn’t let them get a solid hit in,” Eugene said. “I attacked them and rescued the girl.”
“Rescued?”
He’s mad now.
“You said she needed to live. She’s alive and whole,” Eugene said. “We’ve got a date next Saturday.”
“A date? You and Lynn Dorsey?” Wells exclaimed. “Let me get this straight. I tell you the woman is vital to the survival of the human race, so you decide you’d like to screw her? What makes you think you should ‘date’ the most important person in the world?”
“That’s not what I thought. She’s a sweet girl and I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“You want to be her protector? Her guardian?”
“I’m not… Wouldn’t be…”
“Never mind. You want a bigger role. You did show remarkable initiative. You aren’t really stupid. You might have potential,” Wells mused. It seemed he was used to talking to himself. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“A deal?” Eugene said skeptically.
“You showed some ingenuity in saving Lynn. I need a time traveler.”
He’s got you now.
“A time traveler?” Eugene asked. “You mean someone to keep going back and fixing things?”
“Not so glamorous. I was going to try to find a strong athlete or military man, but maybe fate has given me an answer,” Wells said.
“An answer to what?”
“I need a time traveler who can be a genetic courier to the distant past. Humanity is facing a crisis,” Wells said.
“It is?”
“Not in your immediate time. A hundred years in the future—your future—we face extinction. I’ve been there and I’ve seen it.”
“Crap. They’re going to blow the world up, aren’t they? I knew it.”
“You can think of it that way if you wish. I shouldn’t give you too much information about what comes in the future. Not if you’re going back,” Wells said.
“So, you’re a time traveler,” Eugene said.
He was surprised at how easily he was taking the news, but he’d just had an experience that would live with him, even if it was all imaginary. He’d been drinking after all. Anything could have happened. If it was true, maybe he could go back in time and turn his camp co-counselor away, saving his marriage. Or go back further and save Rachel.
“Why aren’t you going back in time to save the world?”
“I’ve exceeded my limit.”
“How much is that?”
“Not sure. I wasn’t keeping track of how long I was gone each time. But when I got here the last time, I couldn’t return to the temporal world at all. There are limits to how long you can travel. It’s just as dangerous if you return to your own timeline, but you also take the risk of creating a temporal paradox by encountering yourself.”
“Why me?”
He couldn’t deny the idea of time travel intrigued him. He’d read Armageddon 2419 A.D. and Slaughterhouse-Five. Unfortunately, those had been among the hundreds of books he didn’t pack in his hurried departure.
Right. You could be the real ‘Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century.’
“My experience has shown me that the time you spend time traveling comes off your lifespan,” Wells lectured. “That might not be the best way to explain it. Specifically, you age at the same rate when you are time traveling as you would in your own timeline.”
Wells was startled when Eugene started laughing. He was near hysterics.
“Beam me up, Scotty!” he said. “I’ve got three months that I could be exploring strange new worlds. Maybe. Unless I can’t eat.”
“What are you talking about?” Wells asked.
“Before this stupid day started, I was homeless, divorced, unemployed, and had just been told I have terminal cancer. Three months to live, tops.” Eugene continued to laugh. “Why not spend the time left beating thugs with a baseball bat and saving damsels in distress. What’s a few weeks more or less. I have nothing.”
“Cancer?” Wells sounded alarmed. “Sit back down in the chair. You might die in three months, but it won’t be because of cancer.”
“Why not?” he asked, settling down in the chair.
The straps and head clamp returned. The machine whirred and beeped as Wells looked at it.
“Ah, there it is. All over.”
“Are you watching me on TV?” Eugene asked.
“Just a display of your vitals. I didn’t do a full diagnostic scan when you arrived the first time. I was focused on repairing the immediate damage and getting you back into the fight, so to speak. I guess, from your perspective, you could call this a kind of TV. It’s just looking inside you instead of outside,” Wells said. “One of the things humans got right before their extinction was a cure for the longest living killer of people. I can cure your cancer.”
He wouldn’t even have known it was there if you hadn’t spoken up.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’m injecting nanobots into you now, that will seek out and destroy the cancer. I don’t know for sure if that will extend your lifespan. We don’t really know what controls that. It could be fated. The cure won’t be quite instant, but you should see positive results within a week or so.”
I’ll guide them.
“This is unreal.”
“Now,” Wells said as Eugene felt the medicine injected into his bloodstream, “how about becoming our genetic courier?”
“I have no idea what that means,” Eugene said, closing his eyes. He could feel things moving in his body, his bloodstream, his organs.
“People—scientists—developed a means of inoculating DNA near the end. If they’d managed it ten years earlier, the extinction event might have been averted. But they didn’t know what to use. That was the discovery. Over the ages, a nucleic acid evolved that accelerates healing from disease. That will enable humanity to resist the catastrophe. The more people who carry the RNA, the more people who will survive,” Wells said. “My intent, before I got trapped here, was to carry it into the past and plant it in enough people that it would be discoverable earlier than it was—will be. I can implant the genetic marker as a biobot—a kind of biological robot—that will edit your DNA in such a way it can be passed down through the generations.”
“Like a mutation?”
“No. It’s more of a natural evolution, however, there needs to be a critical mass of people carrying it in order to make a change in any significant population. You know, there is evidence that suggests homo sapiens began from a seed population of fewer than 5,000 specimens. Once there is a sufficient sample to be easily discovered, synthesizing it and distributing it widely as a vaccine will be comparably simple. We were just too late to stop the extinction event. I don’t think it would be helpful for you to know the specifics,” Wells said.
“So, how do I pass this on in the past?”
“The usual way,” Wells said, appearing a little nonplussed.
“Specifically?” Eugene asked.
“You travel into the past to intercept certain migratory patterns of the species. You will select females to breed with. Then we’ll move to another migratory hotspot.”
“I… You… What? Breed? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Eugene, you have shown yourself to have flexible morals when it comes to women, even though you have a high aptitude for the species. At least this way, you would be doing something good with your lasciviousness.”
“You can’t imagine it is that easy to simply pop into a woman’s life and impregnate her!” Eugene said.
“You didn’t have a difficult time in your previous life. At least not seducing her. You blocked impregnating her. I accept that you may need a little time to seduce her. That’s why the warning about how much time you spend traveling. I need you to be as efficient as possible. It’s for the good of humanity.”
“We… I’m just going to use innocent women to bear children they never wanted? That’s ridiculous,” Eugene said.
“You can try making transactions. Buy a wife. Even a slave. A prostitute. You’re going to go back centuries. Your current concepts of women’s rights won’t exist. Don’t try to impose them,” Wells said. “The process requires the transfer of genetic material. The most effective is through your children. Blood use is also possible, so you could transfer the genetic biobots to a man if you became blood brothers, so to speak. Saliva is also possible, but it would be the weakest transfer of the biobots.”
Eugene squinted his eyes closed. He could feel a new injection beginning.
“Why can’t we just send this magic serum back to my timeline and start injecting people?” he sighed.
“I’m afraid you would find that more difficult than finding women to sleep with,” Wells said.
I’ll be with you.
“What?” The clamp on Eugene’s head loosened and he looked over his shoulder.
“What what?”
“I keep hearing a voice in my head! Are you talking in my head?”
“Oh. No. Galahad is coming fully online. He needed some enhancements before you start traveling back centuries,” Wells said.
“Who is Galahad?”
“I’m sure I mentioned him the last time you were here. He’s an AI implanted in the device that controls your time travel.”
“AI? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, yes. 1979. It’s an artificial intelligence. A kind of computer program.”
“Artificial intelligence? Is that supposed to make up for my natural stupidity?”
Ha ha.
Wells groaned.
“You may well be the first person in your timeline to make that joke,” Wells said. “Sadly, it is so well-worn by the time Galahad emerges that it is a cliché. Galahad is a computer program that runs in the time travel module I’ve implanted in your brain. His primary function is to compute the very complex temporal and spatial trajectory for your travel that will land you where you are needed. He is also a kind of companion, capable of communicating with you. He’ll be able to advise you, even feed you language and motor skills. Making this kind of jump could disorient you significantly. He’ll help guide you in your actions.”
“Like an artificial conscience?”
Since you don’t have one of your own.
“Right. He makes wise cracks, too. When I was beating the thugs who attacked Lynn, was it you who kept making baseball references?”
Full count!
“Just stay out when I don’t want you.”
“I take it you are having an interesting get acquainted conversation,” Wells said. “I think you can do that back in your own timeline.”
You don’t need to speak aloud for me to hear you.
“Here. I’ve set your life watch with your current age. From now on, it will advance according to your total time lived, not according to the lapsed time in your own timeline.”
Wells gave Eugene a pocket watch. Eugene opened the cover.
“What are all of these dials, hands, numbers, and symbols?” Eugene asked.
“Yes, well, it keeps track of many things for you, like what century you are in and even the exact date.” Wells said. “Galahad can explain it when it’s important. Just keep it with you. It’s tuned to your biorhythms.”
“When do I start traveling?” Eugene tried to remember when he had agreed to become this genetic courier, but it was better than dying of cancer in a hospice somewhere. He’d just need to get a job and find a place to live.
“I think we should wait until the cancer is verified in remission. You’ll have a few rocky days as the dead cancer cells are flushed from your body. Galahad will monitor the progress and make the transfer when you are ready. Probably about two weeks.”
“And I’ll just leave the… car and land someplace in the past?”
“Oh, no. You’ll need a bit of an orientation for each trip. It wouldn’t do for you to land in the twelfth century dressed as you are now. I’ll have appropriate clothing and props fabricated for you. Also, currency. Galahad will need to download languages sometimes. You might even need weaponry when you are traveling back that far. So, when you start each trip, you will come here to be outfitted. You’ll stop here on the way back so I can flush any new diseases you pick up from your system before you return to your own timeline.”
“Okay. I guess. A couple of weeks. I’m kind of tired now.”
“Galahad, take him home.”
Disorientation hit Eugene as he landed back in his car. He didn’t bother to move—just dropped his head and went to sleep.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
