Sweet Significance

On January 15, 1919 12:30, a disaster shook North End of Boston. At the Purity Distillery Company, a tank overheated and burst open, sending forth millions of gallons worth of molasses. Those who heard the explosion mistook it for the firing of a machine gun. Onlookers were swept away by the slow and sticky flood. Twenty one drowned beneath a heavy layer of corn syrup. Such deaths should never have happened. Twenty one lives now remembered for sheer absurdity than tragedy. No one laughs when they speak of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the Radium Girls.

Reading the file in the archives made me furious. I had been assigned to editing all the entries in our “Disaster by Flood” database. It was certainly a step up from going over every entry on the butterfly effect with a fine tooth comb.

My workplace existed outside of the timeline. To from my point of view I had only begun a year ago in 1999. Y2K had been such a disaster for the Department of Timeline Affairs that they had shanghaied random people into temp work for extra manpower. Like other Y2Kers, I had never left. At first I thought that it would be more interesting then my last job, a diner waitress in the middle of nowhere, but the DTA was mostly pencil pushing. The glamor of time travel wore off by the time I realized I couldn’t quit.

I looked up from the file to gaze out the window. I didn’t know why. There was literally nothing out there. It wasn’t the black void of space, the white of a blank page, or the static of a dead tv channel. Looking at the nothing was like having my brain shut off. At least the diner had a view.

This job was killing me, slow as the molasses flood. I couldn’t quit this job. I wouldn’t know what to put down on my portfolio. There were department employees that had quit, but they always came crawling back. The perception of time ruined any chance of them readjusting to life in a linear timeline. They couldn’t look at reality in the same way again, knowing what would happen and when, having to use primitive technology instead of the DTA’s amenities. The temporal shock would only get worse the longer I stayed employed.

It wasn’t as if I liked the job in comparison to real life. They sold me on the free publicity of Doctor Who and Back to the Future, not the drudgework. Like most I expected to be the companion to the Doctor or the Marty McFly to Doc Brown. I was just another side character in someone else’s time travel story. Most at the DTA were faceless numbers just there to make sure that nothing ever changed. Every tragedy must go as they were expected to.

I was already on edge by the time I read the molasses flood file. Something so random could have taken me out. The DTA had strict rules about changing the outcomes of events. If quitting was off the table, I could go the other direction. Going rogue, actively screwing with the system.

I was going to stop the great molasses flood.

This wasn’t something I could do by myself. It was take others, and the only ones who would join me had similar grievances. I’d need a man on the inside.

The time machines were kept far from the archives under heavy duty security. Each was a swimming pool sized steel half sphere. When in use the top would come down over the passengers and spin at a speed of 5G. Each took a whole team to operate just one at a time. The traveler would stand in the middle while the support team worked the technicalities.

I took my fifteen minute break to wait outside the nearest bathrooms to the time machines, coordinating the timing for in between time jumps. Even from behind layers of stainless steel doors and bullet proof glass I could hear the machinery working like a jet engine. When it stopped I leaned back against the wall next to the drinking fountain.

The support team filtered through the doors, and the man I was looking for. Trevor, a middle aged man who had been employee for twenty five years of his life straight. One of the many headache inducing things about the DTA was that we had both started at the Y2K disaster. I’d kept an eye on him. He seemed so happy to be there when we started. Now he looked dead inside, as if his motivation had been scooped out of him.

“Hi.” I nodded his way and casually blocked the men’s bathroom in what I hoped looked like a coincidence. “Interested in a talk out back?”

By “out back”, I meant the courtyard, a recreational room meant to look like the outdoors. Of course there were no outdoors, just inside, and the nothing. We went under the bleachers by the track like a couple of teenage stoners. There was no surveillance down there as far as we knew.

He lit up a cigarette, and blew out a puff.

“What do you want?”

“A way out.”

“Don’t we all?”

“I’m going to take the system down with me. Change the timeline.”

Trevor looked at me with tired red rimmed eyes.

“And what, make us all work overtime?”

“We’re already working overtime! I’ve heard you say your brain is broken from all the work. I think mine is too.” The work was so consuming that you could go home, but when you returned to work it would drop you have only a minute after you left. Time was wound and rewound so that a person could technically work twenty years within what the space of a couple hours. All that traveling was stressful on a body that was supposed to exist in a linear timeline.

“I’m going to stop a disaster.” I explained the molasses flood, though I wasn’t sure if he was paying attention.

“It’s only twenty one people.”

“Every life counts. If we can stop this one disaster, we can cause a butterfly effect. They evacuate, the death toll is cut, more people survive, they multiply, increased population, no one grows up with baggage.” I was going to gum up the works like Hell. “Don’t you want to go out with a bang? Don’t you want to be significant?”

Trevor nodded, but didn’t look at me. “When they catch us I won’t vouch for you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

We used a backup machine in a forgotten room. It was for small jumps and only big enough for a single passenger. The machine was made of steel, and shaped like one half of a coconut shell, with a hood that slid up and over the front when in use. I lay down against the soft, squishy padding and buckled myself in, while Trevor worked at the controls. Without a full teak it took longer then it would for a typical operation.

By now our coworkers and supervisors would be noticing we hadn’t returned. They would assume we were in the bathroom, the snack machine, getting coffee, or even at the nurse for sudden illness. Once they determined we weren’t in either of those places, it would be assumed that there had been a temporal accident sending us away from our assigned time frame. After that someone would notice how suspicious it was that two people from separate jobs had suddenly disappeared.

“Ready?” Called Trevor.

I gave a thumbs up. He threw the switch.

The machine came alive, lights blinking, engine humming loudly. The hood came down, locking me inside. Now would be a bad time to find out I was claustrophobic. The spinning began, the lights whirling around me until my eyesight was overtaken by streams of white. My teeth rattled, the contents of my stomach sloshed, and every organ in my body felt like jello. The faster I went, the more it felt like I was being shoved so hard into the padding that I was going to become one with the seat.

The machine didn’t appear in the past, it only flung the passengers back there. My vision was dark and blurry by the time I reached my destination. I stumbled around with my hand stretched out until I came to a brick wall. My whole body throbbed like a bruise. The heat really didn’t help. My hair stuck to the back of my neck like an ugly Christmas sweater.

I looked around once my vision cleared up. I was outside a warehouse, and big burly men were carrying things and driving little antique trucks. When I turned around I saw exactly what I was dealing with.The damn tank was bigger than the any of the buildings around me. I had expected a water tower, not this monstrosity. I should have actually looked at the pictures instead of making assumptions.

I looked at my watch. 12:15. No time to waste.

“Hey!” I jumped out to yell at the workers. “It’s about to blow!”

Everyone stopped and stared at the crazy woman in pants. If I was a professional I would have dressed up to fit in. No time for that.

“It’s too hot today, that molasses is going to ferment and go sky high!”

Some of them laughed nervously, probably thinking I was drunk. A few came towards me to escort me from the premises. I ran, keeping out of arm’s reach, shouting my warnings. Even if they didn’t believe me, I was still shaking things up. If I made a big enough scene I get potential victims out of the effect area. I needed to get to the edge of the North End neighborhood.

From the sounds of the sirens, someone called the police. Now that I thought about it my comments sounded more like a threat than a warning. At least that would give them something to worry about.

I ran through the streets screaming about explosions and evacuations, only stopping when I came to an intersection. A crowd surrounded me. They had all come to watch the maniac screaming about the coming flood, as if I were a doomsdayer with a cardboard sign about the end of the world.

A wave of nausea washed up through me. The world spun around me. Trevor was already taking me out of the timeline.

I was back in the time machine, lying on my back. The dome opened up, showing another gawking crowd of medics, supervisors, and the security team. Trevor was already being cuffed while the tech support looked at the damage.

The guard above me scowled down.

“Did it work?” My voice was weak from all the screaming.

“Congratulations. You cut the death toll to nineteen.” The guard prepared his handcuffs.

“Heh.” I smiled. “Good enough.”