17/7/98

Through the Israeli Continuum

If Fischel hadnג€™t gotten to Ben-Gurion in time, who knows what weג€™d be celebrating this year.

    Beep beep, went the time machine, and Fischel was off. He really hated these trips, because they made him dizzy. And the jet lag was stupendous.
    Albert Einstein was deep in thought when the young Israeli whiz kid barged into his lab. "Ach!" he exclaimed at the intrusion.
    Fischel excitedly told the great professor about the future. Einstein found the time machine mildly interesting, though he couldn't see the point of it. He, did however, like the idea of personal computers. "So. Everybody sits at home in the future, computing theories," he said, nodding sagely. Fischel explained that, actually, computing is the one thing computers aren't much used for.
    After 90 years, Fischel assured him, E=MC2 was still a runaway bestseller equation.
    "Don't know vat you're talking about," Einstein shrugged.
    "You know, relativity. Uh, this is 1905, isn't it?"
    "No. 1904."
    Einstein was the first adult Fischel ever met who didn't know about E=MC2. Fischel jotted it down for him.
    The young Israeli beamed himself home for breakfast, getting there 10 minutes before it was served but eight years late. His mother said he looked like he'd had a good night's sleep.
    The following day, Fischel thought he'd see what he could do about the peace process.
    "What are you doing here?" said the unshaven man with the tablecloth on his head.
    "It's about peace," Fischel said.
    "Beace?"
    "That's right. We're cousins, so we really shouldn't be at each others' throats."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "I bring a message from the future," Fischel explained. "Killing is bad. Talking is good. You should sit and schmooze with the Jews, maybe work something out."
    The Palestinian's eyes brightened. "You really think the Jews would buy my carpets?" Fischel blushed. "Don't tell me you're not Yasser Arafat."
    "I'm his abu. Little Yasser's in kindergarten. Whom shall I say called?"
    Fischel realized it was back to the drawing board. There is nothing, he grumbled as he flew back through time, as annoying as a time machine that can't tell time. He returned home just in time for Jerusalem's 4,000th anniversary celebrations, missing supper entirely. No matter, he thought; how much schnitzel and chips could a person eat?
    Wondering just how far back the thing would take him, he set the dials all the way to 1899. He'd always wanted to meet Herzl.
    Damn, Fischel thought as he emerged from the timecraft, must've overshot again.
    "Excuse me, geveret, what year is it?"
    "One," the woman replied. She gaped at him starkly. "And who might you be?"
    "Fischel, from the future," he said, offering his hand.
    "Then we're related," she said, accepting the handshake. "I'm Eve."
    Fischel felt faint. "Can't be," he said weakly.
    "You see anybody else around?"
    It had to be a programming problem, he surmised, a glitch in the Quondam Digital Cyclic Indicator (QDCI). Either that, or he forgot to extend the Anterior Cunctation Continuum (ACC) beyond the year 1900, thus theoretically condensing all erstwhile time to one epochal unit. What a bonehead he was!
    Fischel told Eve all about the future, at least, as much of it as he could recall.
    "Five billion people?!" she exclaimed. "Wait till I tell Adam, he's not even sure if he wants to have children. 'Such a responsibility, they'll tie us down,' he says whenever I bring up the subject."
    They chatted for a while, and then Eve showed Fischel around. "Nice garden," he said. "Did you plant everything yourself?" He realized immediately it was a dumb question.
    "It was like this when we moved in," Eve said with a smile. "Care for an apple?"
    "NO!" Fischel yelped, and swatted her hand away from the tree. "You're not allowed!"
    That really annoyed Eve. "I won't tell if you don't tell," she said.
    Fischel knew it was time to skedaddle, before he got blamed too.
    On the way back to the present, he made a quick stop in 1983. He left a note on the kitchen table. "Dad," he wrote, "Never mind that I'm only five years old, take my advice: Don't buy bank shares."
    At that same table 12 years later (or, in the time it took Fischel to return, four seconds later), a plate of schnitzel and chips awaited him. It was cold. "You're late again," his mother admonished him. Fischel grinned. "Yeah, but I'm improving; yesterday I was 1,000 years late."

THE YOUNG genius spent the weekend tinkering with his time machine. He oiled the sprockets, touched up the paint job and vacuumed out the sunflower-seed shells. Most important, he found the problem with the Timeframe Anachronism Compensator (TAC): it needed a new battery.
    He tried it out the following morning.
    "I wouldn't bother if I were you," he told the toiling young men and women. "I'm from 1995, and I think you should know, the project's been discredited."
    "And I'm from 1921," retorted one of the women, "and I think you're one of them anti-socialists." The others jeered.
    "Suit yourselves," Fischel snapped back. "Go spend six years draining 63,000 dunams of Hula swampland, in 35 years they're just gonna reflood it. But hey, don't let me stop you."
    Someone threw a clump of mud at him, plus a few petulant words. "Meshugga! We're creating rich new farmland from nothing, it's the greatest Zionist endeavor of all time, past or future. They'll bring back the Mandate before they reflood the Hula. They'll tear down Tel Aviv and restore the desert; we'll all be speaking Yiddish again before they undo our work."
    "Wait and see," Fischel said.
    "You'd have us believe they're going to reclaim a swamp from farmland? We're not idiots! Why not just tell us the Russians are someday gonna let the Jews make aliya?"
    Fischel smirked. "And not just the Jews," he said as he climbed back into his capsule and zoomed away.
    He wasn't particularly hungry, so he skipped the schnitzel and continued right on to the future. The past, he decided, was a bit of a bore. Great people making dumb mistakes, and nobody willing to listen to a pisher who just happened to know better. The future, he was sure, would be different.
    Prime Minister David Levy was on TV when Fischel arrived, assuring the nation that he could wrap up a comprehensive peace pact with Syria before the next election. And then he wished Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin a happy 98th birthday.
    Fischel wondered which one of them he voted for.
    The young genius from the past wandered about town a bit, marveling at how different things looked in 2020. The skyscrapers, the subways and superhighways, the glittering theater district.
    "Gee, Tel Aviv's come a long way," Fischel said to a lady at a bus stop.
    "It sure has," she agreed. "But this is Yeroham."
    "Oh."
    A worker came by and removed a huge billboard from across the street. the sign was tattered and faded and looked to have been there for years. "Prepare for the coming of the Messiah" it said.
    "Huh," Fischel scoffed, "it looks like they've finally given up the ghost." 
    The woman looked at him oddly.
    The worker put up a new sign. It read: "We told you so!"
    Fischel fled -- out of Yeroham, out of the future, all the way back home. To 1995.
    Good ol' 1995, he thought, as he walked through his front door and smelled the schnitzel and chips.