Temporal Consciousness Transposition

By Kenneth Joel Teicher

Imagine you are offered the opportunity to travel to any time in your past. You can either simply observe and remember or actually alter your life. Ben Tilifson has received this precise opportunity. Thinking it is a joke perpetrated by friends, he reluctantly decides to play along. Except it is not a joke. During Ben's first trip, he coerces his fifty-five year younger self into speaking to a high school crush to whom he was originally too bashful to even say hello. The brief conversation changes his life forever. The girl introduces Ben to a friend that will become his wife. Realizing it's not a joke or bad dream, Ben decides to continue his travels. Fearful of doing anything else that might alter his own life, he decides to devote his action to saving lives from terrible accidents. Upon returning from his most recent trip, Ben discovers his life has been dramatically transformed. A thorough review reveals that he must have traveled back in time simply to win a lottery. Memorizing the winning numbers, Ben travels twelve years into his past and purchases the winning ticket. He returns to a life even more altered than the one he just left. He is convinced he is somehow jumping between parallel yet different timelines. Recognizing the contradiction of time travel, Ben wonders what would happen if he reverses the action of his first trip. The surprise ending to the Temporal Consciousness Transposition presents a paradox that convinces Ben he has no free will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Joel Teicher
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370303816

Kenneth Joel Teicher

Having grown up in a home where reading was treated as not just a pastime but also a true pursuit. I have been reading many genres all my life, from historical biographies to science fiction. I have also learned to love the craft of writing. After years of diligent effort, I self-published my first book in 1991. Trips including historic sites, during a period of more than forty-five years, have always fascinated me - from the Roman Forum and Pompeii in Italy, the Acropolis in Greece, Stonehenge and the Roman Baths in England, the fantastic ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey, the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia, the fabulous Great Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt, various sites in Israel, the fabled city of Machu Picchu in Peru, the Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzä in Mexico, The Terracotta Warriors and the Great Wall in China, and countless other locations around the world. These adventures have strengthened my fascination with the wonders of ancient civilizations and my growing amateur interest in the study of archaeology. They also triggered my desire to create a series of stories that have developed into the Erin and Craig action/adventure series. These stories are based on many of the locations noted above. I am currently working on the fifth book in the series. Future trips to other exotic and historic locals will, I hope, provide additional stimulating sites on which to base future stories in the series. My other passion is the fanciful world of science fiction. Over the years, I have sought to add my own work to the field. I am currently editing the seventh addition to this part of my collection.

Book preview

Temporal Consciousness Transposition

Copyright 2017 Kenneth Joel Teicher

Smashwords Edition

Erin and Craig stories

The Alkano Letters

The Carthage Connection

Carved In Stone

Mystery of the Kukulcan Temple

Science Fiction Stories

The Mission

A Matter of Time

The Yesterday Tree

Solitude

Gateway: The Shula Intervention

This is a book of fiction. Descriptions of locations are based on the author’s research and altered or enhanced to suit the story. None of the characters is intended to portray real people. Names and incidents either are the product of the author’s own imagination or are fictitiously used and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead is entirely by coincidence.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing by the author.

Chapter 1

Wednesday – 7:30 PM present day

I flung myself out of my recliner so quickly that I nearly fell on my face. A cold sweat was streaming down my cheeks. I’ve never experienced such a realistic dream. The memory of what I looked like in the dream was so vivid that I rushed to the bathroom to examine myself in the mirror. An older man with a balding, gray-haired scalp and an almost pure white mustache and goatee stared back at me. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief at the familiar image. My red sweatshirt was tight against my growing beer belly and my gold wire-rimmed glasses hung loosely around my ears.

Nevertheless, I could not shake the feeling of having been inside a very different and much younger body – my teenage body. My head still ached as I grabbed a towel, dried my face, and slowly walked back to my study. I collapsed into my old brown leather recliner and attempted to regulate my breathing. As my heartbeat became more regular and the pounding in my chest lessened in intensity, I noticed something was different about the chair.

Without warning, a screen, attached to an articulated arm, swung up from the left and stopped about a foot in front of my face. I shook my head in confusion as I stared at the blank screen. It was totally alien to me and had certainly not been there in the morning. I was sure Linda, my wife, was not responsible – she abhorred anything to do with electronics. It was then that I realized the chair did not feel quite right. The arms, back, and seat cushions felt harder than they should. It was almost as if there was something different underneath the leather. The screen suddenly brightened and an odd voice began speaking. You were warned about the affects you would experience during your short initial excursion, the unfamiliar voice explained.

Who are you and what did you do with my chair? I asked, thinking I was speaking with a person controlling the screen that now displayed my image, like a mirror.

Your confusion is understood. All data provided to you during the previous dialogue will now be repeated.

It was at that moment that I realized I was talking to a very sophisticated computer. One that I had spoken to before. I rubbed my brow in an effort to lessen the pounding in my head as I waited for an explanation.

Wednesday – 7:00 PM – present day

I parked my car on the far-left side of the driveway, realizing my wife might still be out with her friends. As I walked toward the front door, I thought about bringing my bowling ball in but decided there was no point since I would be needing it again the following Wednesday. Bowling was the only real physical activity I got. Although, I somehow knew it did little, if anything, to help keep me in shape. Before unlocking the front door, I pulled a few pieces of mail out of the rusting black box and thought again about getting a new one. After taking a step inside, I quickly entered the code to turn off the alarm system.

I took off my coat and hung it in the front hall closet, then I walked to the inside door to the garage to see if my wife was back. Her space was empty, and I wondered how soon she would return. As I closed the door, I realized it had been pointless to look. If Linda was home, she would have already turned off the alarm. I turned to look out the window. It was only seven o’clock, but it had already gotten dark outside; I hated winter. We live in Brookline, a great residential community, just outside of Boston. It’s one of the few towns that still has an old-fashioned ten-pin bowling alley, rather than the candlepin style favored in most of New England.

Life had been good to us and retirement was even better. Both of us had very successful careers. Over the years, Linda had risen from a night duty nurse to head of nursing at Boston Children’s Hospital, a position from which she only recently retired. Five years ago, I retired as a managing partner of BCR, Boston Computer Research, a very high-tech consulting business. We both had great pensions and our savings were abundant. We have plenty of great friends and family and a very active social life. After more than forty years of marriage, we are still deeply in love.

Linda and I had talked endlessly about giving up the big house on Berkeley Court, in which we raised our three boys. Now that they were all out of the house, married with families of their own, was there any point in keeping a five-bedroom home? We also maintained a vacation home on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina. Linda wanted to sell the house and move south, to better weather, on a permanent basis.

Having grown up in Brookline, I found it difficult even to think of leaving the area forever. Linda liked to point out that we had no need to continue maintaining our large home. I thought she meant that perhaps we should move to a smaller house. What she really meant was that we were wasting money maintaining the big old house that seemed to be in constant need of some repair or other.

I walked into my study and, after glancing at the three envelopes, dropped them on my desk, picked up the TV remote, and flopped into my recliner. I pointed the small silver controller at the TV and pressed the power button. As I selected a news station, I attempted to get more comfortable, pulling down the mechanical control that lifted the footrest and pushing back into the seat. The chair felt different somehow. It was as if the cushions had somehow gotten much harder. While I wondered what had happened to the chair, a small screen suddenly moved up from the left side of the chair on some sort of a corrugated metal multi-jointed arm.

I looked around, baffled by the strange mechanism. Suddenly, the TV went blank and the screen, about a foot away from my face, came to life. It displayed an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors that became a little dizzying. A bit of quiet static was quickly replaced by a voice that sounded more mechanical than human. Please do not be distressed, the voice began. This device has been installed as an experiment. You have been selected to take part in a Temporal Consciousness Repositioning investigation.

Who the hell are you, and how did you get into my house? I demanded.

That is not germane to this research. Your selection has been made and testing will now commence.

What if I’m not interested?

The explanation of this study will enable you to react affirmatively, the voice continued, not really answering my question. The system installed will enable you to transit to any temporal unit in your past, it added in its unusual rhythmic cadence.

What the hell does that mean?

You can transit to any prior temporal period along the interval of your life cycle. You may take any action you wish during the transit period or merely observe.

Are you saying this is some kind of time machine? I asked, suddenly becoming interested. I’m a science fiction enthusiast, and the idea of time travel has always intrigued me. But the possibility of it being real was something I knew could only be a fantasy. I was sure this was all some kind of joke that a few of my friends had cooked up. Both Jack and Harold were retired computer engineers. I guessed that, while I was out bowling, they somehow convinced Linda to let them play this little trick on me. So, I decided to play along.

This device will allow you to re-experience a selected temporal episode from your past, the voice continued, interrupting my thoughts.

Won’t that create a time paradox? Won’t the fact that there will be two of me in the same time ... ah ... I didn’t know how to express my concern. If I simply came face to face with a younger me, would anything change? If I did anything in the other time, would I return to a different world? I recalled an old science fiction movie during which a group of people traveled into the distant past. One person stepped on a bug and killed it. When they returned to their own time, they found a world they did not recognize. It became known as ‘the butterfly effect’.

The TCT will not generate a physical being in the earlier temporal period, the mysterious voice explained without elaboration.

What’s TCT stand for? I asked, wondering how far this joke was going to go.

Temporal Consciousness Transposition. Only your consciousness will be conveyed into the period selected. All that you know, all of your memories, both conscious and sub-conscious, all of the information you have accumulated will be merged into the consciousness of the younger rendition of you. All information will be integrated so that your earlier self will have full access to both that which you are and to that which you were.

Why me? I demanded.

You meet the requirements.

What requirements?

Age, mental stability, and a very strong sense of honesty and integrity.

There must be millions of people that meet those criteria.

Correct, other factors are too numerous and transcendental to explain during this dialogue.

Baloney! I don’t believe you. This is nothing more than a joke, constructed by some of my friends. Or, it’s just my over-active imagination and this is nothing more than a ridiculous dream.

You can be assured you are not now sleeping. This investigation has been in development during an extensive period. You are the first of many to be tested. 

So, you’re saying that you can send my mind back in time and join it to what I was then and that I can use the knowledge I have now to do whatever I want in the past? As I asked the question, I realized it sounded so dumb that I wasn’t sure I even understood it.

Essentially that is the correct interpretation.

I looked around, expecting to see some sort of microphone and speaker. Jack and Harold must be somewhere nearby rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter at this silly joke. I waited for a while, expecting them to jump out of the closet or rush into the room at any moment. After a while, nothing happened so I decided to continue playing along. So, you’re going to let me pick some point in my past, send my mind back and let me change anything I want?

If altering the past is your decision, correct.

And altering the past doesn’t bother you?

You are not obliged to make any alterations to your past life. You are free to simply observe a previous experience.

Why would I want to go back and simply relive some event in my past?

It is your decision, the enigmatic voice responded.

Well, it doesn’t make any sense to me to go through all this trouble just to relive some past experience. I guess I have to think of some little thing I might change. But when I come back, won’t my world be completely changed by what I do, no matter how small the ... ah ... alteration is?

That possibility is part of the research.

So, I can go back with, oh let’s say the results of the World Series and bet on the winning team? Or, I can go back to the day before Kennedy was assassinated, call the Secret Service and warn them? Or, I can make sure not to act like the jerk I was with an old high school crush?

If any of those options are what you choose to do, correct.

At this point, I realized I must have been a lot more tired than I thought. That I was sleeping and this whole thing was really nothing more than a crazy dream, despite what the voice said. I decided just to go with it. The question was, what time should I go back to, and what if anything, should I attempt to change? I suddenly remembered a girl I liked a lot in my high school English class. She was way out of my social circle and I never even considered having a conversation with her. She was someone I had known since kindergarten, but never felt comfortable even saying hello to. Wouldn’t it be fun to go back and force myself to talk to her? Maybe I could even ask her on a date. I started to fantasize about Judy. What harm could it do just to talk to her? How could a simple conversation have any consequences that might change my life? Okay. I want to go back to twelve grade English class.

You must be unambiguous with your selection of temporal period and exact geographic coordinates, at least insofar as our system can interpret them for conversion to acceptable data.

You got it. Let’s say I’m sitting in class, the bell is ... no, I want to go back to the night before, when I’m getting ready for bed.

Precise temporal information and spatial preference are required, the computer voice, reminded me.

This whole thing was beginning to aggravate me. If I was dreaming, why did whatever part of my brain, where the dream was occurring, need such specific information? I, once again, decided to explore the ridiculous offer to visit my past. Okay, I’m in the upstairs bathroom of the house I grew up in, getting ready to take a shower. It’s, let’s see, Thursday, November 5th, 1964, and the time is 10:30 PM. I also provided the address of my parent’s home.

My choice was based on nothing in particular other than the fact that I was in twelfth grade that year. I wasn’t even sure the date and day matched. Although, I did realize that if there was any chance, no matter how remote, that this was more than just a dream, I wanted a little time alone to adjust to the situation before finding myself back in high school.

After a moment, the disembodied voice continued. All pertinent spatial and temporal information is acceptable and has been entered into the system. Initial transposition may generate severe mental instability, both during insertion and repositioning to the current temporal period. Is this information understood?

I thought for a minute before responding. Why would I warn myself that I might get a bad headache? If this wasn’t a dream, then the computer, or whatever it was, that I was talking to, was pretty clever, more than I was. How was that even possible? Okay, I guess I understand.

Before I could say anything else, I felt an excruciating pain in my head. The next thing I knew, I was somewhere else.

Thursday – 10:30 PM – November 5, 1964

I found myself standing in front of the bathroom mirror, in the upstairs bathroom of my parent’s house, the place where I grew up. I stared at a much younger version of myself. My full head of black hair was in need of a haircut. A tiny bit of stubble covered my face and chin. I was already a bit overweight. I looked around and felt like my dream had suddenly grown a stepchild; I was in my dream’s dream.

Coming out anytime soon? I heard my mother, long dead, call out.

Just getting into the shower now, I heard my young voice respond.

It was weird hearing my mom’s voice. It was my first exposure to the possible reality of my dream’s dream. Putting aside any more thought about my bizarre situation, I showered and got ready for bed. The bedroom was just as I remembered it. As I got under the cover, a strange feeling overcame me. I continued to feel like what I considered the real version of myself. At the same time, memories and thoughts of my younger self began bubbling up to the surface of my consciousness. The knitting together of my two selves was giving me a horrendous headache. Initially, my current personality and that of my younger self seemed almost to fight over my consciousness. After a few hours of what I guess you would call integration seemed to settle in and I managed to fall asleep.

When I woke up, part of me expected to find myself sitting in my recliner. The other part of me ignored that thought and got ready for school. I reminded myself about the purpose of my reliving this day of my life. As I walked to the high school, I had a sort of conversation with myself. My whole plan was to get up the nerve to talk to Judy, something I had absolutely no memory of having done originally. The girl was completely outside my tiny circle of friends. My recollection of her was that she was very smart and popular, the antitheses of me. She was also extremely attractive, another reason I was too bashful to speak to her. I remembered not being at all popular in high school and certainly not considered one of the brighter students. 

Math was our, my first class, and I allowed my younger self to take control. I recalled math as being one of the few subjects in which I excelled and enjoyed listening to my younger self answering several questions. English was our second class and the room was right next to math, so I got there early and took my seat in the empty room. A few minutes later, some kids started filling the room, and then Judy walked into the room. She looked even prettier than I remembered.

Even though a few inches shorter than me, she was tall for a teenage girl. Her long, light brown hair seemed to gather on the right side of her face, exposing the dimple on her left cheek. I couldn’t determine which one of me recalled that the hairstyle was called a flip. As she got closer, she glanced at me and we made eye contact for an uncomfortable moment as she took her seat next to me. I stole a glance at her legs, remembering that back then girls wearing slacks was frowned on.

Our teacher walked into the room and began discussing our current reading assignment. It was the Herman Melville story, Billy Budd. Both my earlier self and I remembered the story. The strange thing was that the younger version of me and I had a completely different view of the story. When the teacher called on me to explain what I liked about the book, the future me responded first. As I began speaking, everyone turned to stare at me. When I glanced around and noticed Judy’s eyes glued to mine, I realized that everyone was surprised by my response. I suddenly remembered that I hardly ever spoke in English class, certainly not for as long and as competently as I was now.

Before I finished answering the question, the bell saved me. I was the last to leave the room and our teacher gave me a big smile as I passed. Nice work, she said. I guess I’ll have to revise your grade.

When I walked out of the room, I was surprised to find Judy waiting for me. She offered a warm smile but did not say anything. I started to walk to my next class, another one we shared, and Judy walked very close to me. Before we walked into history class, she tapped my arm to stop me. Her touch sent such a strong emotional surge through me that I didn’t hear what she said. She gave me a funny look and repeated her words. You sure surprised me and everyone else in English. I don’t think I ever heard you say more than five words before today.

Oh, my God! My future self thought. She’s giving me exactly the opportunity I needed to begin a conversation and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. My future self was just as bashful and nerdy as my past self was. My teenage brain felt like it had frozen and I knew I would have to take over. I began speaking without giving any thought to what I would say. That’s because you don’t know me very well. We should go out some time so you can hear me talk a lot.

I felt my younger self gulp. What I said was completely out of character for the teenage me and I could feel his, my face, get warm with embarrassment.

That would be nice. I’m not doing anything this Saturday. She paused to take a pen and a small pad from her purse. After scribbling something, she tore off the paper and handed it to me. Call me tomorrow so we can plan our date, Judy said over her shoulder as she walked into class.

As I turned to follow her, I felt my head begin to pound. I glanced at my wristwatch and noticed that it was 10:30 AM. I didn’t think anything of the time because my headache became so overwhelming that I blacked out.

Chapter 2

Wednesday – 7:33 PM – present day

I was back in my recliner, with a horrendous headache. At first, I had no clear memory of anything. Before I could collect my thought, the computer voice began speaking and I realized I was back in the present, my present. Everything, at least in the study was completely familiar to me. A picture of Linda and me, on our most recent vacation to Southern South America, sat on the desk. Pictures of our grandchildren filled the walls. I looked at the desk clock and noticed it was just after seven-thirty. Had I really been asleep for only a few minutes?

I rushed to the bathroom to take a look at myself in the mirror. My sixty-nine-year-old eyes stared back at me. Relieved, I slowly walked back to my study and fell into my recliner. As I continued looking around the room, I heard the front door open and Linda call out to me. As I got out of the chair, the screen folded itself out of sight and the voice stopped speaking. I rushed to the front hall, took Linda in my arms, and gave her a long kiss. When we separated, she gave me a funny look. What’s that for?

I ... ah ... just needed to kiss you hello, I mumbled, afraid to bring up my strange dream.

Oh Ben, you’re such a dear, Linda said with a smile as she brushed a bit of her blond hair from her face. "I hope you had something to eat at the bowling alley. I’ve had enough to last me until breakfast.