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Johnson didn’t pay attention to Locke’s query, instead, he remained stooped over his PocketSkimmer reading his most recent treasure; a complete DataPak containing every known fact regarding the assassination of a long bygone President of the then United States of America. His name was Abraham Lincoln and Johnson had paid a small fortune for the information. He had just come into possession of the data a week before and since then he had become totally absorbed by it. Moreover, impracticalities and permits were things that put Johnson off—he left these fiddling matters to his partner Locke.
This last response so disturbed Locke that he began pacing the room as he always did when agitated. Johnson watched his partner and felt bad that his ways of doing things upset him. Poor, Locke! A “by the book” man from cradle to grave! An invaluable asset to someone like Johnson whose head was always in the sphere of a detached reality.
Nevertheless, Johnson was going on his mission.
“And what does that mean?” shot back Locke.
Without waiting for assent, Johnson strode over to the Console Dataskimmer, punched in his access code, and searched for the subject “Dinosauria, The Death of”.
Locke, in the meantime, knowing that there was no stopping Johnson when he began postulating on a new theory, made himself comfortable in the Easachair that he kept in the lab for these moments. He thought of the many times he had sat in this very chair and listened to Johnson’s rambling. Often, he had been able to glean a practical—and profitable—venture from his partner’s meandering. The Timatron was just the latest of these enterprises. Well, he would listen to Johnson again, but if there seemed to be anything that would interfere with his leisure, Locke was going to be sure to stifle it. For if the truth be known, he did not care a great deal about humanity in general; but his own comfort was something that he would not allow to be disturbed.
After a few nanoseconds of searching by the ’Skimmer and a few minutes of perusing of his notes, Johnson began: “Locke, you know that for centuries man thought that these often-massive creatures died of a plague like none other before or since their time. We found signs of debilitation among all their fossils and traces of some type of microorganisms which, we called a disease, in many but not all of them. Yet we have never been able to name the exact cause of their demise. We blamed it on this plague of some manner and wrote it off as that. Now, because of you, my friend, we know that our beliefs were erroneous.
“I apologize for the use of that word, Locke. It was a poor choice as you are a good man—who possesses little or no imagination. Your ‘theory’, as I will refer to it from now on, is based on the supposition that time is a fixed structure and that any movement of the structure would cause cracks in it, indeed, a tremor in time would cause it to crumble and fall. I, for one, do not hold to this theory.
“Since you feel that I am lacking your insight, perhaps you will enlighten me with your beacon of intelligence.” retorted a sarcastic Locke.
“Very well, Locke,” Johnson replied.
Locke contemplated this idea. In all the years he and Johnson had been partners, he had never known this man to put an idea into words unless he had a great deal of certainty behind it. Could what he is saying now be true? If it was, could there be any financial gain for the firm of Johnson & Locke in it? His continued silence brought a response from Johnson.
“How so?” questioned a suddenly more attentive Locke.
“If my theory proves accurate, we will be able to hire our services out to any person, and there will be plenty of them, who wishes to change the course of their family history or who simply wish to unburden themselves of a skeleton in their closet by changing one simple deed or the other. Who among us has not said ‘If only I had done this differently?’ None would be my guess.
Locke became caught up in the last portion of his friend’s speech. He was sampling the population of the planet for those rich enough to afford such an operation. By the time he multiplied the amount by the fee, he had become bogged down in carry-forwards ad infinitum! There were too many zeros! Just the way he liked it. Then a thought came to him that halted the calculations.
“Well, that says that about them.” sniffed Johnson.
“At the minimal chance that a wave will occur balanced against mankind’s possible gain, yes I am,” concluded Johnson.
Locke sat quietly in his Easachair. Figures with many zeros after them spun through his head again. He pondered the practical and dubious points of both his argument and that of Johnson’s. Both had merit, despite Johnson’s snobbery regarding another group’s theory. In Johnson’s favor, they could make a sizable profit; those zeros were not too numerous to be ignored!
Johnson squirmed while looking at his colleague; evidently, he was trying to decide on a troublesome matter. With an unseen shrug, he appeared to have resolved the question, but he still did not answer right away. He walked over to his Pocket Skimmer, picked it up, and skimmed to a picture-the last photograph taken of Lincoln before he was killed-and looked at it quietly for some time. Locke began pacing again in hopes of getting his stubborn friend to come forward with an answer.
“For pity’s sake stop pacing, Locke, I will tell you what you desire to know, but it is rather embarrassing as I have never held any secrets from you in the past. The fact is that I made a trip in the Timatron while you were in Washington DC securing the patents for it. I was curious about my lineage, so I followed my ancestry back several generations. In doing so, I discovered, to my great discomfort, that my family had roots in the slave trade.
Roots! Ha! Much more than that! I discovered that one of my greater-grandparents was a ruthless slave owner! As ruthless a one as there ever was. To him, a black man was a machine and when a machine broke down or rebelled, he would try to bullwhip it into performing while not caring that he was beating a human being!