The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(141)

“Yes, a librarian, although at a very special library. But allow me to begin at the beginning. As you have seen, man will gain the ability to travel in time, but don’t imagine that where I come from we have time machines like the one in your novel, Mr. Wells, or that time travel is the order of the day. No, during the next century, scientists, physicists, mathematicians all over the world will become embroiled in never-ending debates about the possibility or impossibility of time travel. Theories will abound on how to achieve it, all of which will run up against the immutable nature of the universe, which, regrettably, lacks many of the physical characteristics necessary for them to test their theories. Somehow it seems as though the universe had been created impervious to time travel, as though God himself had reinforced his creation against this aberration of nature.” The traveler fell silent for a few moments, during which he took the opportunity to scrutinize his audience with his forceful gaze, his eyes as black as two rat holes. “Even so, scientists in my time will refuse to admit defeat and will persist in trying to find a way of fulfilling man’s deepest longing: to be able to travel along the time continuum in any direction he pleases. But all their efforts will prove in vain. Do you know why? Because in the end time travel will not be achieved through science.” Then Marcus began pacing around the halo of light, as though to stretch his legs, pretending to be oblivious of the writers” curious stares. Finally, he went back to his position and his face cracked into a smile.

“No, the secret of time travel has always been in our heads,” he revealed, almost gleefully. “The mind’s capacity is infinite, gentlemen.” The candles continued to sputter as the traveler, with his smooth, downy voice, sympathized with them because science in their time was still a long way from envisaging the enormous potential of the human mind, having scarcely moved on from studying the skull to examining its contents to try to understand the functioning of the brain, albeit through primitive methods such as ablation and applying electrical stimuli.

“Ah, man’s brain …” he sighed. “The biggest puzzle in the universe weighs only four hundred grams, and it may surprise you to know we use only a fifth of its capacity. What we might achieve if we could use it all remains a mystery even to us. What we do know, gentlemen, is that one of the many marvels hidden beneath its cortex is the ability to travel in time.” He paused again. “Although to be honest, even our scientists cannot identify the exact mechanism that enables us to travel along the time continuum.

But one thing is clear: man’s brain is equipped with some sort of superior awareness that allows him to move through time in the same way as he moves through space. And even though he is far from being able to harness it, he can activate it, which is already a huge accomplishment, as I am sure you can imagine.” “Our brains …” whispered Stoker, with childlike awe.

Marcus gazed at him fondly, but did not let this distract him from his explanation: “We don’t know exactly who the first time traveler was, that is to say the first person to suffer a spontaneous displacement in time, as we call it, because the earliest cases were isolated. In fact, if we have any knowledge of those initial displacements it is thanks to the esoteric and other journals devoted to paranor-mal activity. However, the numbers of people claiming they had suffered such episodes began to increase steadily, although at a slow enough rate for the strange phenomenon to continue to pass unnoticed, except by a handful of mad prophets whom people usually ignore. By the middle of our century, the world suddenly experienced an epidemic of time travelers who appeared to come from nowhere. But the fact is they existed, as if the ability to move along the time continuum were the next step on Darwin’s evolutionary ladder. It seemed that, faced with an extreme situation, certain people could activate areas of their brains which snatched them from the present as if by magic, and propelled them forwards or backwards in time. Even though they were still a minority and unable to control their ability, theirs was clearly a dangerous talent. As you can imagine, it was not long before the Government created a department responsible for rounding up people showing this ability to study them and help them develop their skills in a controlled environment.

Needless to say, registration with the department was not voluntary. What Government would have allowed people who possessed a talent like that to roam free? No, Homo temporis, as they came to be referred to, had to be supervised. Be that as it may, the study of those affected did succeed in throwing some light on the strange phenomenon: it was discovered, for example, that the time travelers did not move through the time continuum at a constant speed until the inertia of the impulse was used up and they came to a halt, as in the case of Mr. Wells’s machine.

Instead, they moved instantaneously from place to place, leaping through the void as it were, only able to control whether they landed in the past or in the future through intuition, as with the initial leap. One thing seemed clear: the further they traveled, the more their energy was depleted after the journey.

Some took several days to recover, while others remained in a comatose state from which they never recovered. They also discovered that if they concentrated very hard, they could transport objects and even people with them on their leaps through time, although the latter proved doubly exhausting. In any event, once they had understood as much as they could about the mechanism in the mind that enabled people to travel in time, the most pressing question, the one that had given rise to heated debates even before time travel became a reality, still remained to be answered: could the past be changed or was it unalterable? Many physicists maintained that if someone traveled into the past, say, with the intention of shooting someone, the gun would explode in their hands because the universe would automatically realign itself. They assumed the universe must possess some sort of self-awareness designed to protect its integrity, which would prevent the person from dying, because they had not died. However, by means of a series of controlled experiments based on making tiny adjustments to the recent past, they discovered time had no such protective mechanism.