Synopsis: Dr. Benjamin Curd has lost everything - his daughter, his reputation, and potentially his freedom. After he is put on trial for the murder of Timothy Albright, the man responsible for the death of his daughter, Curd begins to think his attempt at time-travel, which resulted in Timothy's death, may not have been the best idea.

- The Life and Death of Timothy Albright -

Ghent, Belgium 2091

“And at what point did you realize that you had made a grave mistake, Dr. Curd? After the body had fallen eleven stories and hit the concrete?”

“Objection, your honor,” the defense attorney shouted, slamming his fist into the oak table and startling one of the jurors.

“Oh, of course, you were just attempting to travel through time.”

“Enough, counselor,” the judge intervened. “Objection sustained. Next time you harass the witness you’re cross examination will be over.” Judge Thompson’s glasses had sunk just below the ridge of her nose, and her eyes looked even more penetrating through the magnification of the lenses.

“The prosecution rests.”

Benjamin Curd fidgeted in his seat, a drop of sweat sliding down the crevice between his eyebrow and the start of his nose. Every bit of the man looked guilty. The darkening bags under his eyes attested to two days without sleep. He replayed the experiment in his head like a NBA buzzer-beater. His brown hair was matted to his scalp, curving around his forehead in moist clumps. Even now, in the presence of his peers and his pupils, he wasn’t quite sure if he was guilty or not.

“I’d like a redirect, Your Honor.” The defense attorney stood and paced in front of his table. Benjamin let out a mellow sigh. A redirect could help his case.

“Dr. Curd,” the defense attorney started, fastening the bottom two buttons of his dark blue Attolini suit. “Did you push Mr. Albright off the 11th story of the Belfry?”

“No Sir, I did not.”

“And was Timothy Albright forced to partake in this experiment, or did he volunteer?”

“Objection, leading,” the prosecutor shouted, leaning back in his chair as if he’d just won a championship game of poker.

“Sustained.”

“I’ll rephrase. Dr. Curd, how did Timothy Albright find himself on the 11th story of the Belfry?”

∞

Timothy pulled the hood of his jacket over his face to block the blistering wind. Above him, the clouds hovered closely like an overly-protective mother.

“So explain this one more time before I go through with this. All I have to do is jump?”

Benjamin nodded his head, the wind whipping past his face. “Yes, all you have to do is jump.” He had been with Timothy since the beginning, through the trial, and even beside him during the botched lethal injection attempt.

“I am granting you a choice,” Benjamin had said in the jail cell three months ago. “You can either walk into that room and die by three needles injected into your veins, or you can join my experiment. You can take back what you have done.”

With a simple nod the deal was made and Timothy never asked how the doctor had managed to set up the entire process, tricking the public into thinking Timothy Albright had been put to death. The lethal injection needles were filled with saline water instead, harmless to the convicted felon, and the act was successfully choreographed into looking like a real execution.

Now, three months after the ploy, the man responsible for the murder of five women was about to jump to his death.

“And what if it doesn’t work?” Timothy asked.

“Then you will die, just as you would have before I set you free,” Dr. Benjamin Curd responded.

“And my body?”

“If the experiment works there won’t be a body. If it doesn’t, I assume everyone will be very shocked to find that you weren’t put to death.”

“And they would find out it was you who set me free. You would risk all of that to get her back?”

“I would, that and more.”

Thunder billowed in the distance as Timothy looked out over the city of Ghent. He wasn’t quite sure when he’d realized what he did was wrong. It wasn’t after he stood over the women’s corpses. It wasn’t even after he’d washed their blood off his hands. He suspected it was when the priest read him the passage from Ecclesiastes, but he couldn’t be sure.

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

That is what he thought he was doing. Freeing them from their thoughts, their inner demons, their bad habits. Perhaps it is not my call, he had thought. The realization of his actions sunk in much too late, and by the time he regretted them, the lives of five families had been shattered.

“If it means anything,” Timothy stated, “I’m sorry for what I did to her.”

Dr. Curd didn’t look into the man’s eyes, but past him. “It doesn’t mean anything. Just bring her back.”

With that the doctor tightened the contraption hooked to Timothy back and peered over the ledge to make sure the machine was still generating energy. The circular mechanisms rotated at blinding speed, each oval segment rotating around the center eleven stories below them. The hole in the top of the device was big enough for a human body to pass through, but Dr. Curd had only tested his experiment on animals thus far. Timothy Albright would be his first, and last, human test subject.

“It is ready. I’d push you, but I don’t want you to miss the target.”

Timothy crept closer to the ledge, ignoring the doctor’s remark. He had grown accustomed to the obvious insults thrown at him the past couple months. Taking a deep breath, he stepped over the ledge. The wind that hit his face numbed him, but it was only seconds before he passed through the raging current of the device and hit the concrete below with a mellow thud.

Dr. Curd calmly descended the stairs of the Belfry. He knew if the experiment failed, the man would die. If it was a success, he wasn’t quite sure what would happen. His decades of research on the subject of time travel had always presented backwards-time travel as impossible. A man sits at a poker table, the article by Stephen Hawking had started. He somehow travels one minute into the past, and stands across from his earlier self. He then shoots the earlier version of himself. If he’s dead, then who fired the shot?

The scenario craeted a paradox. For this reason Benjamin Curd had no idea if the experiment would truly work, but he’d risk everything to find out. When he reached the bottom of the staircase he walked out into the night and frowned upon seeing Timothy’s corpse below the machine. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the splatter of blood that somehow appeared artistic.

The streets were silent. The late hour of the night ensured him that he’d have enough time to set up the machine and go through with the experiment without anyone noticing, but Benjamin would never forget the face of the woman that emerged from the corner of the Belfry. For a second he thought the experiment worked and it was his daughter that had come back to life, her rosy cheeks visible even in the dim light. But upon second glance he knew it wasn’t her, and she screamed and ran off into the distance.

He wondered what satisfaction Timothy received in murdering those women and his daughter. As he stared down at the Timothy’s corpse, he didn’t feel any comfort or adrenaline or intrigue. All he felt was emptiness.

∞

“And why did you want to conduct this experiment in the first place?”

“I wanted to make things right. I wanted my Abigail back. Is that so wrong?”

“That’s for the jury to decide,” the defense attorney stated. The prosecutor sighed at the obvious ploy to tug on the juror’s emotions. “And what did you think would happen?”

Benjamin fidgeted in his seat once more. “I thought Timothy Albright would have been transported back in time and would be able to change how things played out.” A small chuckle emanated from the back of the room. “He owed me that much. He owed society that much. I can’t accept the idea that some things are meant to be – that we have no power in changing both the past and the future. Science tells me otherwise.”

“What does science tell you?”

“Decades ago CERN proved it was possible to go to the future with the Large Hadron Collider experiments. But we’ve never been able to go to the past because of these paradoxes. If a man shoots his prior self and dies, then who was really there to make the shot?”

“So you’re saying the experiment was doomed from the start?”

“I didn’t believe it was. I didn’t believe any of that. I believe the universe has the ability to correct itself, to reach a new state of equilibrium. If the experiment had worked then none of this would even matter. All of us would never have met in this court room, I would not be on trial for premeditated murder, and I would have my Abigail back.”

∞

When Timothy Albright lifted himself up from the concrete, a small crowd had gathered around him. The machine was nowhere to be found. Judging by the look of the crowd, he had indeed been transported several decades into the past. He wondered how Benjamin had calibrated the machine so successfully.

Jesus Christ, he thought. It worked.

He jumped up from the pavement and ran away from the shocked crowd. March 5th, 2045. That would be the day he would wait for. He put a hand in his pocket to make sure the key to Benjamin Curd’s safety deposit box was still there. He would take out 10,000 dollars from the doctor’s safe, hunker down in a cheap motel, and wait for the day he would follow through with the act. When he reached the bank the electronic calendar displayed 1/9/2045. Not bad, he thought. Just a couple months off. A couple months of freedom.

He spent the next two months mostly in his motel room, staring at the ceiling and reflecting on the five women he’d killed. They had all been beautiful, too beautiful.

On the day of March 5th he loaded the gun that he’d taken with him through time and walked out of the Super 8 motel. When he entered the building the doctors didn’t give him a second look, briskly walking past him to attend to their patients. Room 240 5C. He stopped at a map pinned to the wall and continued on his way.

He could hear the cries of an infant before he opened the door, and for a few seconds he couldn’t believe the reality of his situation. Here’s to making it all right, he thought. His mother looked more beautiful then he remembered, as she caressed the soft forehead of a newborn. Her smile quickly faded when he took the pistol out, and his father’s eyes widened when the piercing shot hit his ears. The bullet penetrated the infant just above the right eyebrow, and the blood splattered onto his mother’s face just before the entire hospital room shook violently and Timothy Albright vanished in thin air.

∞

Benjamin Curd jolted his head upwards, emerging from a nightmare. He had no recollection of the alternate reality in which he freed a convicted felon and transported him through time. Three black smudges were imprinted across his forehead, presumably from the newspaper that he had fallen asleep on at the kitchen able.

When his daughter walked into the kitchen she couldn’t help but burst out in laughter at the sight of her father’s scarlet letter pasted onto his forehead.

“Please don’t leave this house looking like that,” she said, brushing brunette strands from her eyes.

Benjamin felt like he’d just awoken from a thousand-year slumber. His daughter looked more beautiful than ever, dressed in her Sunday’s best, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Hurry up and change or we’ll be late for Church,” she said.

Dr. Benjamin Curd slowly rose from the table, unable to say anything but a simple “Okay” and “You look beautiful today.”