BACK AND FORTH-I

CHAPTER 8

                                                         Chapter Eight

                                                   THE SECRET JOURNEY

          Maria and I made our way down to the cellar and into to the laboratory. There is an eerie feeling about the place. The mood feels surreal and it fascinated me. I had made an historical journey, and, to my knowledge, I am the only human that had ever travelled in time and space. Yet, I had an intuition that I might not have been the only person to journey in a similar manner. Dr Sprig most certainly did just as I had done years before me.

       "Do you feel, Maria, that Doctor Sprig might have used the time machine himself? He disappeared, after all. If he did utilise this machine, then where did he go? Look about this place. The clues are here for all to see. The wall, bricked up from the inside, that sort of thing," I mused allowed.

  Maria took my arm and kissed my cheek. "Wherever Doctor Sprig had gone, he is not here, so it matters not, my sweet love," she replied, giving my hand a squeeze.

  I noticed her expression change, to one of sadness; then she moved to stand before me. She folded her arms and looked down toward her feet.

        "As much as I would wish, it would be wrong to travel into the past to visit my father. It would be selfish to do so, and I would be so upset, knowing his fate. Even if I tried to go way, way, back and stop his smoking habit. I am sure that my father would resist to the point of alienating me. What, too, if I should meet myself, or my family see two of me? That would really freak them out!"

  I wiped a tear from her cheek, and held her close, her head fell into my chest, and I felt her arms around me. I knew that she had reasoned well enough for me not to argue with her articulate rational. Over her shoulder, I gazed at the time machine and wondered if I should not attempt what is in my heart to do.

  I ushered Maria to sit for a while. The needed for her to advise me, whether or not I should visit the period I wrote of in my book, to meet with King Harold, or indeed, with Duke William of Normandy.

       "We could learn so much," she said. "Besides, if you decided to undo whatever mess you'd made, you could always return to the current time before you left, and disarm the time machine, destroying the doctor's papers, so that time travel would never be accomplished. You see, my love, there is always a reasoned argument to complement any action that is not made to perform evil. Go and do what you feel you must do; and, as I said, you will always be able undo what you have done, and history will return to what it was, or how we know it today."

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 The reader will now understand why I married this woman. Not only is Maria very, very pretty, she has one heck of a brain to complement her amazing personality. Mind you, if her reasoning on this subject is not spot on, then I might not be writing this story, and, of course, you would not be reading this paragraph, thus I would have messed up history, and my name might be amongst those most infamous, such as Stalin, Hitler, G.W. Bush and the witches, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, or that cow from 46 North Road, Wellington.

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