The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(143)
“And what state is our world in, have you discovered any anomalies?” Stoker asked, amused. “Are there more flies than there should be?” The time traveler indulged the Irishman’s jest but with a strangely sinister chuckle.
“I usually always find some anomaly,” he declared in a somber voice. “Actually, my job is rather entertaining: the nineteenth century is one of the time travelers” preferred eras for tampering with, perhaps because in many cases their interference has extreme consequences. And no matter how many of their muddles I sort out, nothing is ever as I left it when I come back. I wasn’t expecting it to be any different this visit, of course.” “What has gone wrong this time?” asked James.
Wells could not help noticing the note of caution in the American’s voice, as though he were not completely sure he wanted to know the answer. Might it be the men’s clubs, those luxurious redoubts where he took refuge from the loneliness that stuck to him like a birthmark? Perhaps they had never existed prior to a couple of time travelers deciding to found the first one, and now they would all have to close down so that the universe could go back to its original form.
“This may surprise you gentlemen, but nobody should ever have captured Jack the Ripper.” “Are you serious?” asked Stoker.
Marcus nodded.
“I’m afraid so. He was arrested because a time traveler alerted the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Jack the Ripper was caught thanks to this “witness,” who chose to remain anonymous. But in reality that is not what should have happened. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of this time traveler from the future, Bryan Reese, the sailor known as Jack the Ripper, after murdering the prostitute on November 7, 1888, would have boarded a ship bound for the Caribbean as planned. There he would have pursued his bloodlust, murdering several people in Managua. Owing to the distances involved, no one would ever link these crimes with the murdered East End whores. Thus, for the purposes of history, Jack the Ripper would have disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving behind him the unsolved mystery of his identity, over which as much ink would be spilled as the blood that had flowed under his knife, and which throughout the ensuing century would become the favorite pastime of researchers, detectives, and amateurs, who would all root around in Scotland Yard’s archives, desperate to be the first to put a face to the shadow time had converted into a gruesome legend. It may surprise you to know that some of the investigations pointed the finger of suspicion at a member of the royal household. It would appear that anyone can have a reason for ripping a whore’s guts out. In this case, as you can see, popular imagination outstripped reality. I imagine the traveler responsible for the modification couldn’t resist finding out the monster’s true identity. And as you deduced, Mr. Wells, no alteration was detected and everyone fell victim to the ripple effect, like the rest of the universe, for that matter. But this is an easy change for me to sort out. In order to set history straight, I only need travel back to November 7 to prevent the time traveler from alerting George Lusk’s Vigilance Committee. Perhaps you don’t consider this particular change to be for the better, and I wouldn’t disagree, but I must prevent it all the same, for as I explained, any manipulation of the past is a criminal offense.” “Does this mean we are living in … a parallel universe?” asked Wells.
Marcus glanced at him in surprise, then nodded.
“It does indeed, Mr. Wells.” “What the devil is a parallel universe?” asked Stoker.
“It is a concept that will not be coined until the next century, well before time travel ceases to be a mere fantasy of writers and physicists,” explained the traveler, still regarding Wells with awe.
“Parallel universes were meant to be a way of avoiding the temporal paradoxes that might occur if it turned out the past was not immutable, that it could be changed. What would happen, for instance, if someone traveled into the past and killed their grandmother before she gave birth to their mother?” “He would not be born,” replied James hastily.
“Unless his grandmother wasn’t really his mother’s mother, which would be a roundabout way of finding out that his mother was adopted,” Stoker jested.
The traveler ignored the Irishman’s observation and went on with his explanation: “But how could he kill his grandmother if he was never born? Many physicists in my time will argue that the only way around this paradox would be if important changes to the past created parallel universes. After killing his grandmother, the murderer would not vanish from that universe, as one would expect. He would carry on living, only in a different world, in a parallel reality sprouting from the stem of the original universe at the exact moment when he pulled the trigger, changing his grandmother’s fate. This theory will be impossible to prove even after time travel becomes a reality with the appearance of time travelers, for the only way to verify whether changes to the past produced parallel worlds or not would be by comparing it with a copy of the original universe, as I explained before. And if we didn’t have one now, I wouldn’t be here talking to you about the mystery surrounding the identity of Jack the Ripper, because there would be none.” Wells nodded silently, while Stoker and James exchanged puzzled looks.
“But come with me, gentlemen. I’ll show you something that will help you understand.”
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