The man who mastered time

"We were looking across countless centuries into the future," said Loto. "The future!" "Yes," declared Rogers. "Must you always think of the future as a wonderful civilization of marvelous inventions, mammoth buildings and airplanes like ocean steamships? All that lies ahead of us, no doubt. A hundred years--two hundred--a thousand--will bring all that. But further on? What about then, gentlemen? Ten thousand years from now? Or fifty thousand? Do you anticipate that civilization will always climb steadily upward? You are wrong. There must be a peak, and then a down grade--the decadence of mankind." "Please, let me go on," Loto said eagerly. "I need not tell you all now exactly how we knew we were looking into the future, and not the past. We, ourselves, did not know it that first evening. But later, when I studied the scene more closely, I could tell easily." "How?" the Banker demanded. "By the details I saw. The type of building. That animal that looked like a dog. The sun--I'll tell you about that in a moment. An artificial light in the house--I saw it once or twice when it was night there. And the girl. Her manner of dress--" "There was a girl?" said George quickly. "A girl! Tell us about her, Loto. Was she pretty? Was she--" "Go on, boy," growled the Banker. "Tell it from where you left off." "Yes, she was very pretty," said Loto gravely. "She--" He stopped suddenly, his gaze drifting off into distance. "Oh boy!" breathed George, but at the Banker's glare he sat back, abashed. Loto went on after a moment: "I won't go into details now. While my father was sick, I was able to examine the scene many times. I even think I--well, I sat watching it most of the time for a week at least. "The house had a sort of stable--or a kennel, if you want to call it that--behind it. And there was an open space, like a garden, with a wall around it. There was a little tree in the garden; a tree all covered with snow. But after a few days the sun came out and melted the snow on the tree branches. "The girl was a captive. I guess they were bringing her in on that sled the night we first saw them. There was another woman about the place, and an old man. And a younger man--the one who was holding the girl a prisoner." "You said the house looked about a quarter of a mile away," the Banker declared. "How could you see all these details?" "I had a small telescope, sir." "The scene actually was there," Rogers put in. "Loto used a telescope quite as he would have used one through the window to see Central Park. Go on, Loto." "The girl..." George prompted. "She was a small girl. Very slender--about sixteen, I guess. She had long, golden hair, but it was red when she stood outside with the sun on it. That's because the sun was red; an enormous glowing red ball, like the end of a cigar. It tinged the snow with blood, but there didn't seem to be much heat from it. "Sometimes I could see the girl through the doorway. There was a door, but it was transparent--glass, perhaps--and the house was lighted inside. She would sit on a low seat, with her hair in sort of braids down over her shoulders. Once she played on some little stringed instrument. And sang. I could see her so plainly it seemed curious not to hear her voice. "They appeared to treat her kindly, even though she was a captive. But once the man came in and tried to kiss her. She fended him off. Then he went out and got on his sled and drove away. He was gone several hours. "The girl cried that night. She cried for a long time. Once she ran outside, but one of those huge dogs came leaping out of the other building and drove her back. The dog's baying must have aroused the place. The old man and the woman appeared, and they locked the girl up in some other room. I never saw her again. "A week or two went by and father was better. But the next time I went to the laboratory, the apparatus wouldn't work. Perhaps the chemicals on the screen were worn out--We're not really sure. But we've never been able since to make a screen that would do more than glow. We've never had another that would affect the time-space behind it." "You mean," said the Big Business Man softly, "that after those brief glimpses into the future, it is closed again to you?" Rogers spoke. "Tell them the rest, Loto." The younger man was hesitant. "Perhaps you gentlemen wouldn't understand. We have seen nothing more, but I couldn't forget that girl." "_I_ understand," George murmured. But Loto went on unheeding: "It wasn't the scientific part of our discovery that impressed me most. We kept that secret because we had no proof of what we had done, and we couldn't seem to get any. It was the girl that bothered me. That girl--a captive--facing some danger.... You gentlemen will say she isn't living, that she won't be alive for thousands of years yet. But _I_ say your conception of it is wrong." Loto's voice had gained sudden power. He seemed abruptly years older--forceful, commanding. "_You_ say that girl _will_ be living in the future. I say she _is_ living in the future. She is living just as you and I are living--right here in this exact space that we call New York--within a few hundred yards of this room. She is separated from us, not by space, but only by time. "You, gentlemen, perhaps cannot conceive of crossing that time. But if it were a mile of space, or a thousand miles, you could imagine crossing it very easily. Yet we know that time is a property of space; not one iota different from length, breadth and thickness except that we think of it differently." Loto's flashing eyes held his little audience. "Gentlemen, suppose you--with your human intelligence--were trees, rooted to one spot here in America. And suppose that the accustomed order of things was that Asia would come slowly and steadily toward you and pass before you. That is what time does for us. Do you suppose, under those circumstances, that you could readily conceive of going across space and reaching Asia? Think about that, gentlemen! It's easy for us to imagine moving through space, because we've always done it. But a tree with your intelligence would not feel that way about it. The tree would say: 'Asia will be here.' And if you said: 'That's true. But Asia exists just the same in a different part of space from you. If you go there, you will not have to wait for it to come to you,' the tree--even if it had your present intelligence in every other way--wouldn't understand that. Simply because the tree had always conceived space as we are accustomed to conceiving time. That conception of ours does not fit the real facts, for--except for the way space and time affect us personally--there is actually no distinction to be made between them. That is no original theory of mine; it is modern scientific thought--mathematically proven and accepted ever since Albert Einstein first made his theory public." A silence followed Loto's outburst. Rogers broke it: "We would like to have you gentlemen meet us here two weeks from tonight. We are not quite ready yet. Will you do that?" Every one in the room signified assent. "But what for?" George asked earnestly. "Of course we will, but has Loto discovered anything? Has he--" Loto interrupted him. "I have been working and experimenting for two years." He had fallen back to his quiet manner. "Father has helped me, of course. And given me money--more than he could afford." He smiled at Rogers, who returned it with a gaze of affection. "In two weeks I will be completely ready. Don't you think so, father?" "Yes," said Rogers, and a sudden cloud of anxiety crossed his face. He was a scientist, but he was a father as well, and even his scientific enthusiasm could not allay the fear for his son that was in his heart. "Yes," he repeated. "I think you will be quite ready, Loto." "Ready for what?" growled the Banker. He was mopping his forehead with a huge white handkerchief. Loto's glance swept across all the men in the room. "I have found a way to cross time, just as you are able to cross space. And two weeks from tonight, gentlemen, with, your assistance, I propose to start forward through the centuries that lie ahead of us. I'm going to find that girl--if I can--and release her--help her out of whatever danger, whatever trouble she is in!" CHAPTER TWO "Honor to Loto," cried the Big Business Man. "The youngest and greatest scientist of all time!" "There's a double meaning in that," laughed the Doctor, amid the applause. "The greatest scientist of time! He is, indeed." It was outwardly a gay little gathering, having dinner in a small private room of the Scientific Club. But underneath the laughter there was a note of tenseness, and two of the people--a man and a woman--laughed infrequently with gayety that was forced. The man was Rogers; the woman, Lylda, his wife, mother of Loto. She was the only woman in the room. At first glance she would have seemed no more than thirty-five, though in reality she was several years older--a small, slender figure in a simple black evening dress that covered her shoulders, but left her throat bare. Her beauty was of a curious type; her face was oval, her features delicately molded and of pronounced Grecian cast. Yet there seemed about her, also, an indefinable touch of the Orient; her eyes, perhaps, which were slate gray, large and very slightly upturned at the corners. Her complexion was fair; her hair thick, wavy and coal-black. That she was a woman of intellect, culture and refinement was obvious. There was about her, too, a look of gentle sweetness, the air of a woman who could be nothing less than charming. Her eyes, as she met those of her men friends around her, were direct and honest. But when she regarded Loto this evening, a yearning melancholy sprang into them, with a mistiness as though the tears were restrained only by an effort. The laughter about the table died out. A waiter was removing the last of the dishes; the men were lighting their cigars. "Well," said the Banker, breaking the silence, "now let us hear it. If everyone is as curious as I am--" "More," put in George. "I'm more curious." "You're right," agreed Rogers. "We must get on." "First," the Big Business Man interrupted, "I want to know more about that screen behind which you saw that other time world of the future." "I know very little myself," Rogers answered. "So little that Loto and I could never duplicate it. But the theory is understandable. The space where Central Park now is has a certain time factor allied to its other properties. The light, the rays, from that screen, whatever may have been their character, altered the time factor of that space. "As Loto told you, the modern conception of the reality of things is that the future exists--but with a different time dimension. We have a familiar axiom, 'No two masses of matter can occupy the same space _at the same time_.' That is just another way of saying it. To reason logically from that, an infinite number of masses of matter can, and do, occupy the same space _at different times_." "I'd rather hear about this new experiment," the Banker said. "You made the statement--" "So would I," agreed George. "That girl--" "You shall," said Rogers. His grave, troubled glance went to his wife's face, but she smiled at him bravely. "You shall have all the facts as briefly as I can give them to you. "Loto became obsessed--I can hardly call it anything less--with the idea that he could alter the time factor of human consciousness. In theory it was perfectly possible--I had to admit that. And so I let him go ahead. He has worked feverishly, with an energy I feared would injure his