A Matter of Time: A Romance of Genealogy 
by Michael Burgess

It was 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon when Jake Smith decided that his neighbor had finally gone over the edge and he would have to do something about it.  The Rams had just scored the go-ahead touch­down with three minutes to play, and San Francisco was driving to the forty, when there was a sputtering “ka-ka-pftt” next door, and the set went dead.

“That’s it!” Jake yelled, “that’s the last time I put up with this.”

“Put up with what, dear?” replied Martha, his occasionally loving wife.

Smith banged out the back door, maiming the dog in the process.  “Aubrey,” he shouted, “just what the hell are you doing over there?”  He peered over the falling-down slat fence that divided their properties.

Stratton Bundford Aubrey, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of San Bernardino, grinned happily from a seared patch of his nearly non-existent lawn.  “I did it,” he chirped.

“Did what?” said Jake.

“I travelled through time,” Aubrey replied.  “You see, it’s merely a proper application of a force sideways against the space-time continuum...”

Jake tried to humor his obviously demented neighbor.  “Just how far did you go?” he asked.

“About ten seconds,” Aubrey replied.  “Didn’t have very much power, and...”

“What?” Jake exclaimed.  “You blew a major transformer just so you could travel ten seconds into the past?”

“The past?” said Aubrey.  “Oh, no, the past is much easier.  It’s the future that takes so much energy, because...”

Jake climbed over the fence.  “Just a minute,” he said, “D’you mean this thing”—he pointed at a spindly contraption full of poles stuck in at all the wrong angles—”You mean this piece of junk can actually send somebody into the past?”

“Why, yes,” Aubrey replied, “or some thing—of the proper size and weight, of course.  For example, if I put this rock just so”—Aubrey picked up a stone the size of his hand, and placed it into the machine—”and make the proper adjustments”—he fiddled with the controls—”and type in the proper instructions, then...”—there was another pfft—”Voilà!”—and the rock abruptly disappeared.

“Where’d it go?” said Jake.

“Oh, about forty years back, I should think,” the physicist replied, “somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific.  We don’t want to change history, now, do we?”  Aubrey grinned.

“Saaay,” said Jake, suddenly standing up very straight, “Just how far back could a guy go?”

“Well,” the doctor noted, “there are only three variables:  mass, distance, and time.”

“Time?” asked Jake.

“Yes, time,” Aubrey repeated.  “You see, everything you send into the past even­tually returns to the present, unless you exert a constant force to keep it there.  Like that rock...”—there was a pop and an audible thump, and they both turned around to see a small stone draped with seaweed sitting in the middle of the lawn.  “Well, sometimes they don’t come back exactly on target,” he chortled.

“I’ll be,” Jake said, and he grinned.  “You know, Doc,” he added, “I’ve been tracing my family tree, and I’ve reached this dead end, because Smith is such a common name, and I’d really like to volunteer to make the first manned expedition into the past.”

“Well, I don’t know,” mumbled Aubrey, “Insurance could be difficult...”

“Hey, no problem, I’ll sign a waiver,” Jake said.  “Besides, I just need a couple of minutes to ask my ancestor where he came from.”

It took Smith another five minutes of pleading and threats (during which the Forty-Niners scored, sending the game into over­time), but he finally convinced the good doctor that the experiment was beneficial for science in general and Dr. Stratton Aubrey in particular.  He raced home and grabbed a canteen, boy scout knife, and knapsack, then quickly returned.  “Everything ready?” Jake inquired.

Aubrey looked at his instruments.  “Well, I think so.  Taking into account your weight, available power, and the year you want to reach—1760—I can send you back for no more than five or ten min­utes.  After that, you’ll automatically return.  OK?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jake shrugged.

“Everything’s ready,” beamed the physicist, “all you have to do is sit here.”

Jake got in, fastened the seatbelt, and looked around nervously.  “You sure this won’t hurt?”

“Well, I guess we’ll soon see, won’t we,” the scientist smiled, and as Jake started to protest, Dr. Aubrey pressed ENTER on his terminal.

The world went black and red and green all over, and then Jake Smith was sitting in the middle of a cow pie in a pasture in eigh­teenth-century Virginia.

“My God, it worked!” he shouted, and quickly looked around.  Fifty feet away an old man was plowing the field, plodding along behind a decrepit horse.  Jake picked himself up, brushed away the good Southern sod, and hurried on over.  “Six minutes,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch.

“‘Scuse me,” he shouted, “Excuse me!”  The farmer stopped his horse, gaping at this strangely dressed man from the future.  “I’m looking for Meredith Smith,” Jake noted.

“Ay?” the old coot replied.

“Are you Meredith Smith?” Jake pressed.

“Well, there’s them that calls me that,” old Smith replied.  “Some of them calls me other things too.”  He wheezed a few times before Jake realized he was laughing at his own joke.  “And who’re you?” he added.

“I’m, um, Jacob Smith,” Jake said.  “Your, ah, your cousin,” he decided.

Old Merry Smith looked his “cousin” up and down very carefully with his watery blue eyes.  “Well, ya must be from Willyburg in the East, cuz I ain’t never seen anything like you ’round here before, cuzz.  And these here duds are pretty fancy things for my kinfolk.”  He grabbed Jake’s shirt with his grimy fingers, leaving smudges every­where he touched.  “What kinda cloth is this, anyhow?” he asked.  “And who dya say your pappy was?”

“I didn’t,” Jake said, backing off.  “Look, Mr. Smith, I’m in kind of a hurry now, so I’d really appreciate it if you answer a few of my questions.”  Five minutes were left on his watch.

“Well, son, things move kinda slow in these here parts,” said Meredith Smith, “And me and the missus are pretty much all alone now, ‘cept for old Lightning here, and Buster our yaller dawg.”  He whistled, and started wheezing again when the mangy old mutt came ambling over.  “But the younguns, they’re all livin’ over in Stafford now, near the city, and they hardly ever come back to see us folk no how...”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” Jake said.  He was beside himself as he watched the seconds ticking away.  “Look,” he said, “All I really want to know is where you’re from.”

The old man shook his head in disbelief.  “Gad, boy, where ya been livin’?  We’re all loyal servants of his Majesty King George here.  You ain’t one o’ dem Jacobites, is you?”  He looked at Jake rather closely, then wheezed a third time.  “Or some kind of Papist, maybe?  Or one of them Dissenters?”

Jake threw up his hands in disgust.  “No, no, no, of course not!” he said.  “Uh, what I mean is”—there were only four minutes left”—just precisely where were you born?”

Old Meredith Smith scratched the stubble on his chin, and popped a wad of vile-smelling tobacco into his mouth, exposing the half-dozen rotted teeth still dotting the front of his face.  A stream of the brown crud oozed through one of the gaps and rolled down his chin.  He looked at his visitor in disbelief.  “Why, that’s easy, son,” he replied, “I was a-borned in bed!”

“No,” Jake shouted, “I mean, I mean,” trying to control himself, “where exactly?”

The farmer scratched his head and looked puzzled at such an obvious question.  “Well, I don’t rightly know,” he stated.  “I think it was in my pappy’s house.  I was kinda young then, ya know.”  There was another round of wheezing and a long blattt accompanied by a foul odor.

Jake waved his hands up and down to clear the air.  “Uh, in what state,” he said, “no, what area, what, uh, province...?”  He fumbled for the right words and looked frantically at his watch:  three min­utes left.

The old coot noticed the device for the first time.  “Hey, what’s that shiny thing that you keep lookin’ at on your wrist, mister?  You ain’t in league with the Devil, is you?”  He started to edge away.

This was not going at all well.  This was not what he had planned.  Jake tried to calm himself, taking several deep breaths.  “No,” he emphasized, “I am not a devil worshipper.  I’m your cousin.  Really.  And all I want, sir, is the answer to a few simple questions.  I’d just like to know where you’re from.”

Meredith Smith wiped the back of his hand across his chin, and then swabbed that mess all over his coveralls.  “Well, son,” he noted, “you certainly know how to rile a man up.  What’s yer hurry, anyways?  Why don’t you come on down to the house, and the missus will run you a cup of ale to wash away that dust, and we can talk about it a piece.”  He looked around.  “Why, it’s just too danged hot out here in the sun to get upset about much.”  He brushed away a blanket of flies.

“I don’t have time,” Jake Smith shouted, “I only have two minutes left.”

“Left for what?” old Smith asked.

Jake wanted to strangle his great-great-whatever-grandfather.  “Tell me.  Please!  Please tell me!  Who were your aunts and uncles?”

Meredith shook his head.  “Why, I never knew any of them, son,” he said.  “Not even sure I had any.  We left home when I was just a lad, and my pappy, he just never talked much about any of them.”

“Where was home?” Jake cried, with only a minute now left in his two-century voyage.

The farmer started laughing and slapped his knee, raising a dust cloud that drifted Jake’s way.  “Why, the old country, of course,” he said, “where dya think it was?  Penn-silly-vaniya?”  There wasn’t all that much entertainment out here in the sticks.

“Ahhh, ahhh”—only thirty seconds left—”just answer me this,” Jake said, “Just, just one thing.  You tell me this and I promise you, I promise I’ll never ever bother you again.”

Old Smith grinned.  “Well, don’t be a-countin’ the daisies, son, what is it?” he inquired, spitting a wad of slightly-used tobacco on some incipient shoots nearby.

“What was your father’s name?” Jake demanded.

The sky started to fade around him, but he heard Mered­ith Smith’s faint (but crystal clear) reply just before he transported:  “Why, Mr. Smith, of course!”

The Rams lost that day.