Tales of Time and Travel (LGBT)

TimeLabs - Day 4

Laki Volcano, Iceland, 1783

Marcella was resting as comfortably as possible, given the circumstances. Yesterday, Sam had pulled out the arrow and dusted antiseptic powder over the wound before bandaging it firmly and administering a painkiller. They were still on the roof of Alnwick Castle, about to witness their second dawn.

Zak was studying the time machine controls, trying to make sense of them while they waited for Marcella to recover sufficiently to give them coherent instructions.

"What happened?" A groggy voice broke the silence.

"You were shot. By an arrow," said Sam, coming over to stand at her side.

Marcella frowned. "That's impossible."

"That's what I said," agreed Zak.

"Maybe so, but it happened anyway," remarked Sam in dry tones.

"But arrows have never come in this direction before," Marcella was still in a state of disbelief. "That's why we always park the time machine here. It's supposed to be quite safe."

"Not any more," said Sam. "I've been thinking. Perhaps there is some cumulative effect. How many parties have done these trips, visited the cave at Lazaret? Ten? Twenty? I bet, despite the care you take, at least some of these people have left a trace. A hair, skin cells, footprints. All things that weren't there originally. What if, over time, these tiny changes compound enough to change history? Even if it's just enough to change the direction of an arrow, 169,000 years later?"

"No! That's impossible!" Marcella was horrified.

"Is it?" asked Sam.

"I must have landed the time machine in a different spot," Marcella tried to reassure herself. "In fact, I'm almost certain I did. Now, if I give you instructions, Zak, do you think you can get us to the next location? Because of the poisonous fumes, we can't actually go outside to see the volcanic eruption, but we can get a pretty good look from the sidelines."

Zak followed her instructions carefully, rather thrilled to be operating the machine himself, and soon they emerged in Iceland, to the northwest of Mt Laki. Sam and Zak stared, open-mouthed as a huge fissure opened to the south of the mountain, spewing burning lava a kilometre high into the sky. The fiery-orange light reflected off the ice, as if the whole landscape was burning.

"The mountain itself does not actually erupt, but the fissure grows until it stretches for twenty seven kilometres," advised Marcella. "The fumes are a mixture of hydrofluoric acid and sulphur dioxide‒they end up killing over 50% of the livestock and thousands of humans.

"As I said, we have to stay inside. I suggest you settle down somewhere comfortable to watch. You'll never see something as dramatic as this again, most likely. I'll have a bit of a rest, and you two can open a bottle of champagne or two and relax for the day. There's no-one outside so you can turn the whole wall of your room transparent, like a window."

Zak couldn't help smiling. That did actually sound rather good. It was terrible about the loss of life of course, but there wasn't anything he or Sam could do about that. This was history and it had already happened.

A day lazing around with Sam, drinking champagne and watching lava fountaining out of the ground. He smirked at the image this conjured up. If he had his way, volcanoes wouldn't be the only things erupting that day. He hunted around for the bottle of champagne and opened it.

Sam pushed his worries to one side. He wasn't convinced that Marcella had landed the time machine in the wrong spot at Alnwick Castle, but there wasn't anything he could do about it now. He should just relax and enjoy the day with Zak. He took the glass of ice cold champagne Zak gave him and followed him into their room.