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rock, would time have intervened, supernaturally, in order to ensure its inevitable course? No,
it wouldn't.
    "Once you get past the idea that time is set apart as a force above and beyond the
physical universe, our awe of it dissolves to a degree, I think. And that it must be tied to causality
in some way--as I've said, action and reaction--suggests we're dealing with nothing but the forces
of nature set in motion. Therefore, as well as the universe acting upon us, our every choice, in
turn, manipulates the universe to some degree. What is time? Intrinsic. There in every action,
residual in every reaction. It's embedded in the fabric of cause and effect--the stabilizing factor, if
you will."
    I finished there to take a small sip of whisky, quite pleased with my newfangled
philosophy.
    "Sorry, Baz, you lost me at the landslide. Correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like you're
saying time is some kind of gravity, holding the dimensions in place. And that it can be
manipulated, physically, if you know how to find it. That it might be a preternatural force to us,
but it's one that scientists in the future will be able to measure using a pencil and a slide-rule. To
them, it will be elementary."
    "You heard me right, Rodrigo," I affirmed. "Maybe not that easy to manipulate,
but I get what you mean. Most science fiction is science pending. I don't think any of this is going
to help us understand time travel, but at least it brings the concept down from its lofty perch a
tad."
    "It's a better explanation than mine would have been," said Dumitrescu.
    "But?" I sensed he was holding something back.
    "Well, it's just that you're trying to put your finger on a pulse that has so far eluded the
world's greatest scientists and philosophers. Time is still the same enigma it was when Aristotle
was alive. We can but dance round it with words and ideas, for it is a concept as yet out of our
grasp to comprehend."
    "Amen!" chimed Ethel, sparking her own mocking tone as she lit the second burner
beneath a pan of something spicy. "But we're not going to get very far with that attitude now, are
we?"
    Dumitrescu wasted no time. "That's my point exactly. We can talk till death comes
knocking, and still we will have found no ingress [into] the enigma of time travel. This time
machine, Henry, wields a power with which humanity has no right to interfere."
    "He's right, Henry," agreed Sam. "You've said it yourself, time is an inextricable part of
the universe in motion--a stabilizer. Therefore, meddling with time is meddling with the very
thing that's holding everything together. We'd be wise not to upset that kind of logic. After all, as
Georghe says, we haven't the slightest idea of how it works."
    Rodrigo disapproved. "So what? I don't have a damn clue how my car engine works, but
I drive it through a busy town every day, trusting everyone's life, including my own, to whoever
built the thing."
    "Yes, but from past experience you know the car to be safe enough to permit that risk,"
Dumitrescu argued.
    "And the same goes for this time machine," replied the Cuban. "Think on it. I count at
least two journeys made already. Starting from when it was built--let's say the very distant
future--it had to have traveled back through time to seven thousand BCE, where the new occupant must
have used it to escape a fiery end, hurling himself forward through time to 1979. Two
journeys--one back and one forward. I'd say that makes for a pretty successful test of time travel."
    Rodrigo was a man after my own heart. The tiniest hint that he might survive a foray into
the unknown was all the permission he needed to pack his rucksack and begin the trek. Though
he was only a few years younger than I, he was far more confident, and seemed to regard
boldness as a matter of duty. To me, it was always more of a challenge.
    "That's the most reckless statement I've ever--" Sam said.
    "Sshh!" Ethel motioned towards something outside? "Can anyone else hear that?"
    The deluge had