“I’m so glad we did this,” Eleanor said as we left Wilcox. “People always say, ‘Let’s get a meal sometime,’ but nobody ever follows through. It was great seeing you!”
“You too!” I said. “Talk to you soon!”
We went our separate ways. Eleanor could not have known the lengths to which I had gone to for this meal. Nor could I have known that I, and all of humanity, would live to regret it.
We had been OA friends, keeping in touch sporadically throughout our first semester. After that, it had been less than sporadically. Then, it was just saying hi when we crossed paths at late meal. Years later, when Richard let me in on Woody Woo’s terrible secret, that each “task force” had been assigned to build a different component of a time machine and that they had finally completed it, I knew what I had to use it for.
“I need to go back in time and get a meal with Eleanor so that it isn’t always sort of awkward when we run into each other,” I said.
“Okay,” Richard said. “The time machine is so simple even a non-Woody Woo person can use it. It’s in Bowl 2 in Robertson. Take this key.”
“Oh,” I said. “So that’s why you need a special key to get anywhere in Robertson, even the printers?”
“No,” he said. “We just don’t want you using our printers.”
I was so nervous I accidentally walked into Bowl 1, earning startled looks from an angry CIA recruitment seminar. When I got to Bowl 2, it was eerily quiet, save for the low hum of a monstrous contraption I knew must be the time machine. I set the date for the last time I had seen Eleanor, closed my eyes, and pulled the lever marked, “TO GO BACK IN TIME, PULL LEVER.”
It wasn’t like in the movies—no whoosh of confused colors, no Michael J. Fox, just the hum of the machine. When I stepped out, the Bowl looked the same. It wasn’t until I went outside that I knew the machine had worked. “I enjoyed that fair, well-executed news piece in the ‘Prince,’” someone said. Reassured that I had traveled back several years, I went to get a meal with Eleanor.
I felt relieved as I walked back through campus after our dinner.
“Who says you can’t get a meal sometime?” I thought. Even if that time was three years in the past.
What a fool I was!
The people walking around looked weary, bedraggled. Students crowded outside the door of Cap like refugees begging for shelter. Groups of students marauded about campus chanting, but I assumed it was a Triangle thing. Everything seemed normal. A giant bonfire had been lit on Cannon Green and someone was burning in effigy. The football team must have beaten Harvard and Yale.
I headed closer to take a look. The flames were rising around the effigy, lighting a hooded figure on a platform raised above a ravenous crowd. Was that the captain of the football team? Since when did campus get this excited about a football game? Were those burgundy Mathey sweatshirts or were they covered in …blood?!
A booming voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Let it burn!” it called to the assembled throng. “And from the flames, let the ICE arise!”
I knew that voice, but I had never heard it so angry. University President Christopher Eisgruber was calling for blood. A legion of students hung on his every word.
“The Petraeus administration will crumble!” he shouted. “The House of Eisgruber will rule for a thousand years!”
“EIS AGE!” they chanted. “EIS AGE!”
What had I done?! I hadn’t just traveled through time, I had entered an alternate reality! I knew playing with space-time was risky, but I had no idea it would result in this. Why had I, a mere liberal arts major, tried to mess with the unfathomable mysteries of engineering? Fearing that the crowd would identify me as an outsider—I was one of the few not carrying a “General BETRAY-us” banner—I made my way back to Robertson. As Washington Road came into view, my heart sank. Each entrance was blocked by a tank, its front emblazoned with Eisgruber’s devilish grin.
Stuck in this hellscape, the only thing to do was take up arms and fight for Eisgruber. As the months and the battles wore on, I never learned how my meddling with the past had led to Petraeus’ violent takeover of the presidency in the wake of Shirley Tilghman’s resignation. What I have learned is that some things are not meant to be meddled with.
Son, I do not hope to make it through this war. We are planning an assault on the heavily fortified remains of the E-Quad, the last stronghold of the Petraeus faction. I am confident that we will achieve victory, but I do not expect to return alive. Once the war is over and Eisgruber has established his Pax Eisgruba, foretold by the seer John Nash, you must undo what I did. Rebuild the machine, go back, and stop me from getting a meal with Eleanor! And whatever you do, whatever the temptation, never follow through on your promises to get a meal sometime with an old friend.
– SBW ’15. Illustrated by CSO ’15.
