Dr. Samson Candella, inventor of the Wish Machine, decides to enter the machine. He wants to find out if he can enter a future reality. First, he discusses the voyage with professor Tinsdale, his friend.
I had to talk to Charley. My mind was growing too cluttered with other people’s misery. Charley was the best therapy in the world. My friend always brought me back down to earth.
I brought him to my lab and sat him down. I told Charley about Franzmueller, the expatriate. (I did not want to discuss the Dellarambo’s; their experiences were too close to my own). Otto Franzmueller had seen the horrors of the Second World War and so had Charley. He would take Franzmueller’s story seriously.
“Sam,” he said, “do you expect me to believe some guy went back to the Munich Beer hall in 1920 and killed Hitler? And Germany still conquered the world? The allies were too much for that madman.”
“No, no. You have it all wrong. The Nazis never conquered the world; not in this world. They only beat the Allies in Otto Franzmueller’s world. Maybe in some of the other realities as well, I suppose. There are, I believe, an infinite number of realities. Anything is possible in some R-Line. Everything possible has, or will, happen somewhere. That’s the first rule of quantum mechanics. That’s not what I said, Charley. I said that when Otto went to his alternate past in the Wish Machine he killed Hitler in that past … not in this one.”
Charley understood and he was interested.
“So?”
“So it didn’t do Otto any good to kill Hitler. Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and the other Nazi big shots took over the party. They didn’t make Hitler’s mistakes. Germany got the atom bomb before the Americans. They conquered America and the rest of the world.”
Charley shook his head and smiled. He was being tolerant.
“Sam, your fancy dream machine didn’t do Otto much good, did it?”
I had to agree.
“Maybe not for Otto … but the Wish Machine trips changed everything for Nelton Frigby, Harry Hamm and the other persons that have used my Wish Machine. For the better, I might add.”
Charley sounds like a broken record. I’ve explained what the Wish Machine does a dozen times. He won’t accept the premise there are other worlds beside this one. I remembered the Little Giant locomotive. I took it off my bookshelf and showed it to him.
“This little beauty came out of the Wish Machine, Charley.”
I went over the story of what happened; putting in the old Lionel locomotive and finding the Little Giant in its place next morning. I told him everything.
Charley was sure I was pulling a fast one on him. He picked up the Little Giant and examined it carefully. He didn’t believe my story for a minute. He smiled at what he thought was a deception, a joke at his expense.
“It’s a beautiful model train locomotive, Sam. Where did you really get it?”
I was exasperated. I had my fill of doubters.
“I told you, Charley. It came out of the Wish Machine in place of the beat-up model I put there.”
“Yeah, sure it did. Let’s see the original.”
“The Lionel train’s gone. I don’t know here it went.”
There was only one way to convince my doubting colleague.
Take a trip in the machine, Charley. Then you’ll believe me.”
“No thanks.”
He got serious, something he doesn’t do often. He remembered the war quite well.
“I would have given anything to kill Hitler back in 1945 when we stormed the beaches of Anzio. If your people’s lives changed after they came out of your machine it was because of their dreams or nightmares like Otto’s. Your volunteers only thought they’d gone into the past.
Nodding his chin toward the back of my lab where the Wish Machine sat like a sleeping beast, he said, “Sam, I grant you that you have made a remarkable device.”
For a second he was silent, thinking. He turned his thoughts over in his mind, remembering Mrs. Collyburn and Harry Hamm, both persons he knew.
“Sam, my friend, dreams or not, I admit that most of the time your subjects feel better about their lives. Your machine gave them the dream they needed most. Perhaps there is a force that shapes our ends.”
He chuckled, once more the cynical person I knew best.
“If there are other worlds it seems this is the best one for most of us.”
Charley surprises me sometimes. He doesn’t spout philosophy often. Now and then he fools me and throws out some deep thoughts. He may be right.
Next episode: After much thought, Sam enters the machine.
Gene Paleno is an author and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
