Forget all the nonsense you heard about time travel. You can’t go back and kill your grandfather. The past has already happened. Everything is linked, each event underpins the next, everything is determined; you can’t do anything to break those links. Try, and you enter a forbidden state. Your body won’t obey your will.
Attempting to hurt locals usually puts you in a forbidden state but not always. I guess some people just have no role in history. Doesn’t work both ways, though. Chrononauts aren’t part of the past. Locals can kill us without affecting anything. The people I’m observing are tolerant of strangers and travellers, rarely killing them out of hand the way some communities do, but there are exceptions. So, I’m well disguised.
My camera and recording gear are invisible even to a close examination. My poorly tanned leather clothing reeks so badly I was thrown off public transport on my way to get to the transmission station and had to ride in a taxi with the windows open, paying double fare, to get to my slot in time. After I applied a last-minute dash of odorant, the technicians at the transmission station were breathing through cupped hands. At least it stopped them bitching about payment. They don’t like us travelling on credit. If we get killed, they might not get paid.
I’m stiff and cold from a night on the ground under a thin blanket, but looking forward to my third and final day down Arrow. I’ve got easily enough video to fill my contract for a half-hour feature, which means I can pay off the transmission cost and cover my rent for another two months. With a bit more material, I can make a freelance piece and market it independently, showcasing my skills and giving me a chance to get off the Arrow and into production.
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I drape my shoulder bag and set off for the morning market, a collection of flat boulders and improvised tables on the edge of a cluster of low, single-room huts made of bush wood and clay. Even after two days down Arrow, the smells of rancid fat and rotten food in the market are overwhelming. A nearby open latrine adds to the mix.
The footing is treacherous. There are holes and mounds of earth everywhere. Why haven’t the locals eaten these burrowing rodents? Superstition? Religion? I take establishing shots showing the burrows’ proximity to structures and close-ups of the holes. Academics pay for this sort of stuff, especially if it disproves someone else’s long-held theory.
Into the market, and I pan the hidden camera to take in filthy dry-stone walls and clouds of flies swarming around raw meat. I’ve been living on food bars and water surreptitiously micro filtered in what looks like a leather water pouch.
A rat scampers by. Someone throws a rock at it. All good stuff. The yuck factor sells.
I turn the corner and come face-to-face with a couple. The woman steps behind the man, as is the custom, and gawks at me. The man could be my down-on-his-luck twin. His worn leather is greasy, his arms thin, his cheeks sunken and hollow but his skin is the same light brown as mine. The face framed in roughly chopped hair is mine, too. It’s like looking into a mirror but we are thousands of years down Arrow from mirrors.
It’s pure cinematic gold. This could make a cameo. But how will I talk to him? In my role as a traveller, I know just enough basic pidgin to get by. An interview is beyond me.
“Greetings,” I say and extend both hands at waist height and open in the ‘no weapons’ gesture. He stares at my face without even glancing at my hands. He looks as shocked as if I were lunging at him and takes a step backwards. One foot goes into a burrow, the other comes down on a loose round stone and he goes over backwards, arms flailing, incredulous eyes still locked on my face. His head hits a protruding rock with a sound like a pumpkin dropped on concrete.
His body convulses for seconds then goes still. He stops breathing.
So much for my cameo. People are rushing in from all sides, encircling me. Time to leave. The woman glances down at the corpse then steps forward and speaks softly. I pick out the words ‘mine’ and ‘you’. Does she want me to be his replacement? No, thank you. I go to press the button for emergency recall. They’ll see me vanish, of course, but that story will merge with all their other stories of ghosts and miracles. Nothing will resonate down history to the future. It’s been done dozens of times.
