Tu n'as pas à le [l'avenir] prévoir, mais à le permettre.

(You don't have to foresee it [the future], you only have to enable it.)

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mr Tuniak's office was empty. I would have never thought that it was possible for a man with a time machine to be late for a meeting, but that was what apparently had happened today. At least, that was my first thought. My second one was that something must have happened to Mr Tuniak. But before I could pursue that thought any further, my mobile phone rang. It was Mr Tuniak calling. He had forgotten to tell me that he wanted to meet me directly at the car park, because we would be going to the time machine.

So I took the lift down and went to the limousine, where Mr Tuniak was already waiting for me. His hair was cut short again and he had shaved off his beard, but he didn't seem a lot younger because of that. In his hand he was holding a wooden cane in which strange patterns had been carved.

“This is going to be our last meeting today”, Mr Tuniak said during the drive.

“Why?”, I asked. “What about next week and the week after that?”

Mr Tuniak smiled for a moment. “I should have been more precise. I meant that this was the last meeting for me.”

“So... you have already...”, I started, not really knowing at the moment how to finish the question. “You have already been to our next meetings?”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak confirmed. “Next week you are going to speak to... someone else. And no matter what you are going to see, what is shown to you, do not be concerned. We will most definitely see each other again in two weeks. I should know, because I have just come from there.”

“Is this the first time that you are experiencing our meetings in another order than me?”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said. “And you will soon know why. But I mentioned it, because I felt it was important to tell you... not to be concerned about next week.”

“Five minutes ago, I wasn't”, I replied. “And where are we travelling to today?”

“I have to take care of a few loose ends”, Mr Tuniak said. “Do you remember where the time machine gets its energy from?”

“There's this... charging station in Gibraltar”, I said.

“Have you never wondered why no one has ever found any traces of it? That not a single thing of it has survived?”

“No, not really”, I said. “Didn't you built this station about five million years ago? I wouldn't expect anything to survive for such a long time.”

“Ah, the materials we used for it could weather everything thrown at them for such a long period, that wouldn't be a problem”, Mr Tuniak explained. “The technology we used for its construction comes from the future, your future. There they know how to create things that last. Take the time machine, as another example. It is now about two hundred years old and still works as well as it did when it was first switched on.”

“And then Juliette is also going to use it... it must function for about three hundred years, taken all together”, I said.

Mr Tuniak nodded. “Although I have heard Juliette complain from time to time that things do not work the way they used to. Ah, here we are.”

We had arrived at the time machine.

We travelled into the distant past – about five million years into the past – to Gibraltar. The big water fall I had seen here the last time we had come to this place and which had turned a huge salt desert into the Mediterranean. Gibraltar had turned into a sea gate, one of a hundred on this planet. It was a nice day, with few clouds and a warm sun, and I could see the coat of Africa without any problem.

But my attention was focused somewhere else. The time machine, which I had just exited, was standing right next to two other identical looking time machines (which, strictly speaking, where the same one, just at different points in its “life”). Mr Tuniak's mothers, Helen and Maria, and Juliette had come as well. I did not ask them about their respective ages, but they must have been about the same age as Mr Tuniak, i.e. about a hundred years old. They had all come to the end of their journeys. In the future – and I mean everyone's future, no matter the point of view – no one would need the charging station any more. It had become pointless any way, since the source of its energy, the waterfall of Gibraltar, didn't exist any more anyway.

I would have asked the question of how it could be possible for four old people to dismantle the whole station, but the answer was obvious and right in front of my eyes: robots. Dozens of small machines, not much bigger than my hand and looking like metallic insects, were crawling on and through the station, removing cables, plates, bolts... Everything they took, they put into boxes which were standing right next to the machine. Nothing got lost. Once one box was full, they took it and put it into one of the open time machines. When one of them – Juliette's – was filled with such boxes, Juliette entered it and it disappeared. But only for a few seconds. Then it reappeared again, but now all the boxes had gone. Immediately the insect-robots started to fill it again.

“Where are you taking all the parts?”, I asked.

“I will show you in a moment”, Mr Tuniak said. “Come!”

His time machine had been loaded as well and was now ready to depart. As we entered it, I saw that several of the insect-robots had stayed inside and where going to come with us. Their job was it to unload all the boxes again, once we had arrived wherever we were going.

After we had landed and I had gotten out of the time machine, the only thing I could tell about the place where I found myself in now, was that it looked like a huge warehouse.

“I don't know this place”, I said. “Where are we?”

“Far below the surface of the Earth”, Mr Tuniak said, while watching the insect-robots carry all the boxes out of the time machine and putting them next to the ones they had brought here during earlier trips.

“We are in the beyul?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said. “We are nearly at its lowest level here.”

“But you haven't shown me this level the last time we were here”, I said.

“No, because all the stuff in this place is from your future”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Or did you think that I would stop collecting artefacts that were created after your present?”

“I guess... never really thought about it”, I said. Although I have known Mr Tuniak for nearly a year now, I still struggled from time to time with the fact that what I considered to be the present, wasn't the same thing as what he considered it to be. If he even considered any time his “present”. “Do you stop to collect at any time?”

“About three hundred years into your future”, Mr Tuniak said.

“What happens in three hundred years?”, I mumbled. I knew that Mr Tuniak would not answer that question, since he was very careful about telling me anything that would happen in the future from my point of view. But I could see that he had heard the question and was smiling, because of it. “What are you going to do with your travel journals?”

“Travel journals?”

“The books you kept at Gibraltar and where you wrote down when and where you could be found.”

“They will also be stored here”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Right next to a complete printed version of my biography you are writing.” He pointed to a binder standing in one of the shelves between two boxes. I would have liked very much to take a quick look at what was written in there, but I knew that he would never allow that.

It took the insect-robots several hours to take down the charging station, separate all its parts and store them in boxes. When he had taken the last of those into the beyul, I turned to Juliette and asked: “And what's going to happen with the time machine? Will it also be stored here?”

“No”, said Juliette. “I am going to destroy it. Time machines are too dangerous.”

Mr Tuniak frowned when he heard that. “But not here on Earth, right?”, he asked.

“No, I will program it to fly into outer space and destroy itself there”, Juliette explained. “Earth will not be affected. Actually, I think I already know when it will happen and while it won't have any effect on Earth, it will be detected from it.”

“Really? When?” Mr Tuniak was honestly interested.

“1977”, Juliette replied. “Have you ever heard of the WOW-signal? I think it was caused by the destruction of the time machine.”

We said our good-byes, but Mr Tuniak and I stayed behind and waited until his mothers and Juliette had disappeared with their time machines. “Do you know where we are going to go next?”, he asked me.

“No”, I said, shaking my head. “Should I know?”

“This is my final journey and I only have to take care of one more thing”, Mr Tuniak said.

“Who gets the time machine after you”, I realised. “We are going to Paris in the 1960ies!”

When he had landed, I stayed behind in the time machine while Mr Tuniak went out. But I didn't have to wait for long. After a few minutes he came back, accompanied by Juliette Belloq. Now, she was about the same age as I was.

“I have just come from the bazaar”, she said. “Is there anything else you want to show me?”

“I want to give you something”, Mr Tuniak said. “This time machine. You told us that time travelling is dangerous. Because of that, who would be better suited than you to make sure that history takes its course?” As he said that, his poker face did not show the slightest hint of him knowing that one day she would have to stop him from making a big mistake.

“But how should I know what is supposed to happen, what is right and wrong?”, Juliette asked. “This is exactly the reason why I did not continue my research. Being able to travel through time gives too much power to one person and now you want me to become that person?” She looked at him gravely. “Do I even have a choice? Don't you already know what I am going to say? From your point of view, haven't I already made my decision?”

“No, you haven't”, Mr Tuniak replied. “If your decision was fixed... if all decisions were pre-ordained, then it would not be possible for anyone to change the course of history.” He activated the computer of the time machine. “You will not abuse the time machine, you should have a little more faith in you. I have it. And to answer the question you asked earlier: Yes, I do want to show you something else. The future.” My heart began to race, as I heard that. “But first, we are going to drop my friend here off in his own time.”

Oh, for....

NEXT WEEK

Pourquoi pleurez-vous? M'avez-vous cru immortel?