The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(60)
“I did it,” he announced, trying to sound enthusiastic despite his fatigue. “I killed Jack the Ripper.” His words triggered an outburst of joy, which Andrew observed with amused surprise. After pelting him with pats on his back, they flung their arms around one another, crying out their praise and abandoning themselves to wild excitement more suited to New Year celebrations or pagan rituals. Realizing how unrestrained their reaction was, the three of them calmed down and gazed at him again with a mixture of tenderness and curiosity.
Andrew grinned back at them, slightly embarrassed, and when it seemed no one had anything else to say, he looked around him for any telltale signs that his brushstroke had altered the present.
His gaze fell on the cigar box lying on the table, which he remembered contained the cutting. Their eyes followed his.
“So,” said Wells, reading his thoughts. “You threw a pebble into a still pond and now you are itching to see the ripples it made. Let’s not put it off any longer. It’s time to see whether you really have changed the past.” Adopting the role of master of ceremonies once more, Wells walked over to the table, solemnly picked up the box, and presented it to Andrew with the lid open, like one of the Three Wise Men offering his gift of incense. Andrew took the cutting, trying to stop his hand from shaking too much, and felt his heart miss several beats as he began to unfold it. No sooner had he done so than he found himself contemplating the exact same headline as he had been reading for years. Scanning the article, he realized the contents were also unchanged: as if nothing had happened, the news item related the brutal murder of Marie Kelly at the hands of Jack the Ripper, and his subsequent capture by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Andrew looked at Wells, bewildered. How could this be? “But I killed him,” he protested, feebly, “this can’t be right …” Wells examined the cutting, thoughtfully. Everyone in the room gazed at him, waiting for his verdict. After a few moments absorbed in the cutting, he gave a murmur of comprehension. He straightened up, and without looking at anyone, began pacing silently around the room. Owing to its narrow dimensions, he had to be content to circle the table a few times, hands thrust in his pockets, nodding from time to time as if to reassure the others that his grasp of the matter was growing. Finally, he paused before Andrew and smiled at him dolefully.
“You saved the girl, Mr. Harrington,” he observed with quiet conviction, “there is no doubt in my mind about that.” “But, in that case … ,” stammered Andrew, “why is she still dead?” “Because she must continue being dead in order for you to travel back in time to save her,” the author declared, as though stating the obvious.
Andrew blinked, unable to fathom what Wells was trying to say.
“Think about it: if she had still been alive, would you have come to my house? Don’t you see that by killing her murderer and preventing her from being ripped to shreds you have eliminated your reasons for traveling back in time? And if there’s no journey, there’s no change. As you can see, the two events are inseparable,” explained Wells, brandishing the cutting, which with its original heading corroborated his theory.
Andrew nodded slowly, glancing at the others, who looked as bewildered as he.
“It isn’t all that complicated,” scoffed Wells, amused at his audience’s bewilderment. “I’ll explain it in a different way. Imagine what must have happened after Andrew traveled back to this spot in the time machine: his other self must have arrived at Marie Kelly’s room, but instead of finding his beloved with her entrails exposed to the elements, he found her alive, kneeling by the body of the man whom police would soon identify as Jack the Ripper.
An unforeseen avenger had stepped out of nowhere and murdered the Ripper before he could add Marie Kelly to his list of victims.
And thanks to this stranger, Andrew will be able to live with her happily ever after, although the irony is that he will never know he has you, I mean himself, to thank for it,” the author concluded, gazing at him excitedly, with the eagerness of a child expecting to see a tree spring up moments after he has planted a seed. Noticing that Andrew continued to look at him nonplussed, he added: “It is as though your action has caused a split in time, created a sort of alternative universe, a parallel world, if you like. And in that world Marie Kelly is alive and happy with your other self. Unfortunately, you are in the wrong universe.” Andrew watched as Charles nodded, increasingly persuaded by Wells’s explanation, then turned to look at him, hoping to find his cousin equally convinced. But Andrew needed a few more moments to mull over the writer’s words. He lowered his head, trying to ignore the others” enquiring looks in order to consider the matter calmly. Given that nothing in his reality seemed to have changed, his journey in the time machine could not only be considered useless, but it was debatable whether it had even taken place. Yet he knew it had been real. He could not forget the image of Marie, and the gun going off, and the jolt it had sent up his arm, and above all the wound to his shoulder— that nasty gash he had brought back with him, like an irrefutable mark that prevented everything that had happened from being merely a dream. Yes, those events had really occurred, and the fact that he could not see their effects did not mean there weren’t any, as Wells had quickly realized. Just as a tree’s roots grow around a rock, so the consequences of his action, which could not simply vanish into thin air, had created another reality, a parallel world in which he and Marie Kelly were living happily together, a world that would not have existed if he had not traveled back in time. This meant he had saved his beloved, even though he was not able to enjoy her. All he had was the comforting satisfaction of knowing that he had prevented her death, that he had done everything in his power to make amends. At least his other self would enjoy her, he thought, with a degree of resignation.