I’ve spent the weekend in town, hopefully the end of a forty-seven-year journey, reservations made years ago in some instances, though the bed and breakfast is new. Last night the two-hour Solar Eclipse Blues & BBQ Harbor Cruise my fair well to 2017.
Now I wait for the charter boat to board, across the water sits the USS Yorktown where she has sat for the last forty-two years. There are about four hundred of us for this special cruise but only thirty-five of us are special, we have been “here” before.
I’m not sure at what point my life started to skew out of hand. According to some, our lives are predetermined, in which case nothing I did would change what happened. Others theorize that every action we take creates new alternative universes and that not only do our choices make a difference but events both natural and supernatural can affect our placement between these alternatives. As nature tries to adapt to these changes and damp out the resonances caused by them, unknown laws of nature act in ways that might be considered magical.
Today I am, again, in two places at the same time, literally. Down the pier, he who was I waits also to board. He has been looking forward to this cruise for five years. He was a student at Christopher Newport in Virginia’s Tidewater, There I had found him where I expected and asked if I could join him for a coffee. Even at the age of thirty-nine I looked young and strangely we shared our birth dates. I remember our conversation from both viewpoints, although his is harder to pull up, as it is buried under a second childhood and decades of overlapping memories. What would happen to me if I had not set up that first meeting? Would I just disappear? For that matter what will happen today, will I again be displaced in time and body?
As the sky starts to brighten I feel a jolt, the tour boat has changed, it now appears as a sloop of a style found in drawings I’ve seen at the maritime museum. A quill pen in my hand and an open manuscript in front of me …
“…one of those startling phenomena which in the earlier ages were wont to be hailed as especial manifestations of the Creator s anger, whose influence has been known to stay the onset of engaging hosts, making men deaf to the sound of the trumpet, and dead to the yet more stirring influence of their own furious passions, when standing armed before the array of their enemies, which have been known to scare the robber from his spoil, and join in renewed amity the hands of long hating brothers. And even at this day, when natural causes have been assigned for the appearance of this wonder, and science has learned to anticipate the minute and the effect of its coming, still, what power does it exercise over the imagination of the mass! Few minds can watch the progress of such an event, natural though it be, untouched by awe, unelevated to that Being who is the cause of all; the hearts of the simple and the pro found, of the sinner and of the saint, alike own the influence of the hour, and render up nature s involuntary homage to nature s God.
It had been already calculated that at Charleston and in its immediate vicinity this eclipse would be total; and, consequently, here were drawn together, from different points, several scientific men, astronomers and others, for the purpose of observing its progress.
Nothing could have chanced more happily for their object than the present state of the atmosphere. At meridian the sky was cloudless; the page of heaven lay open, fair, to all who could read therein : at the same time the thermometer stood at 75 degrees in the shade ; but from this hour until two P.M., when the obscuration was complete, continued gradually to fall, remaining stationary at 50 degrees.
As the great luminary became slowly covered, the shadows kept deepening, until, at last, day was exchanged for the sober effect of moonlight : thin filmy clouds then became observable, slowly sailing beneath the diminished orb ; one by one the stars came twinkling forth ; the house hold poultry gathered uneasily together in the yard, and retired to their roosting-places ; the hurrying tread of frequent passers gradually ceased; the buzz of the thousands of eager watchers died away ; the voice of man was silent, or heard but in whispers, and the profoundest silence reigned throughout the city; till, at the moment when the interposition was complete, the bells of the different churches tolled out, adding a thrilling solemnity to the scene.
At this point of the eclipse the effect was grand beyond description: a well-defined, narrow circle, of the most brilliant crimson colour, surrounded for a few moments the darkened orb, which then seemed to diverge into a glorious halo composed of equal rays: but only for a minute was this clearly definable;” the remainder of the page awaits entry…
A phone call, an inquiry by the receptionist, how may I direct your call? A tip, story suggestion, turns out that I am the next on the phone “please do not call me” list, my headset buzzes and the receptionist introduces me to our caller than leaves the conversation after letting me know that Mr. ??? has some insight of interest about the total eclipse of 1970, the eclipse coming next week and at least one in the future. I groan to myself, not another werewolf story
With a touch of Déjà vu, he introduces himself with the statement “No this is not about werewolves and I enjoyed your article that you will write about this in December, and no I’m not a prophet, seer, of a fortune teller either. Let me take you out to lunch and tell you a tale.”
As we talked, I came to believe that he was indeed a time traveler, stuck be unintended circumstances. Displaced in time from the mid twenty-second century back one hundred and eighty-three years, now in his mid-seventies he knows that his expected life will not bring him back to his time.
He has a theory involving gravitational and magnetic interference over time and the same location. In Nineteen Seventy he found himself on an ocean-going minesweeper undergoing deperming at a facility in the Copper River. It was not the year and place he had started the day. I knew nothing of deperming and so he explained that such were magnetic silencing facilities. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries these facilities heavy gauge copper cables are wrapped around the hull and superstructure of the vessel with very high electrical currents (as high as 4000 amps) are pulsed through the cables. This has the effect of "resetting" the ship's magnetic signature. It is also possible to assign a specific signature that is best suited to the particular area of the world the ship will operate in. Common to the date he left 2153 and arrived in 1970 was the totality of a full solar eclipse. Next week he intends to go to sea on a tour boat for the eclipse. He wonders if any others were displaced in time, will it happen again…
The above total eclipses occurred at Charleston SC on the year/date/time indicated and identified using the Java Script Solar Eclipse Calculator (http://www.chris.obyrne.com/Eclipses/calculator.html ) developed by Chris O’Byrne and Stephen McCann along with the Eclipse Explorer developed by Chris O’Byrne and Fred Espenak, accessed via (http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html ). Permission to reproduce this data is freely granted when it is accompanied by the acknowledgment: "Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC"
The diary text in relation to the 30 Nov 1834 is excerpted form a travel journal titled IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. DURING THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835. BY TYRONE POWER, ESQ. Vol II. The whole of this book may be found at URL: http://www.archive.org/stream/impressamer02powerich/impressa...
