Tempus Fugit

O, Tempora! O, Mores! O, Shit!
 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
11/1/05
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

Anyone who reads my essays has an interest in American politics, since that’s what a majority of them are dedicated to. And if you are interested in American politics, then it’s almost certain that at one point or another, you’ve asked yourself what the people who founded America in the 18th century would think of the America of today.

The idea is a common one, to the point where seculars and civil libertarians on Usenet use the initials WWJD to mean “What Would Jefferson Do?” His presumed opinions on everything from income taxes to pet rocks get bandied about.

Of course, nearly all time travel stories involve meeting famous historic figures and dazzling them with your ballpoint pen and Bic lighter. Well, face it: you could go back and dazzle some peasant who is going to die in three years at the age of 27of dysentery, and die regarded as a lunatic because he babbled about strange people who could make flame dance from extra fingers at will. But time travel isn’t likely to be cheap, so why bother? Besides, there’s always those troublesome pair of ducks that make you your own grandfather or change the world so it’s run by cats with hands, or some such.

One way of getting around that is have the historic personages come to this era, a sort of “Connecticut Yankee in the 21st century.” I even took a crack at such a story myself once, writing about a 12 year old boy in a near-future theo-fascist America who suddenly starts getting advice and commentary in his head from Thomas Jefferson. I never could decide if the voice in the kid’s head was really Jefferson – in which case he would be too acculturated to be of much practical use to the kid – or was a figment of the kid’s imagination, in which case the kid displayed an amazing knowledge of a centuries-dead figure he had only first heard of a week before. Fortunately, I quit work on the novel before anyone got hurt.

Lawrence Rowe has written a book, due to be published this week, that takes the idea of historic personages looking at our modern era a few steps further. Tempus Fugit (ISBN# 0-9767688-0-9) posits that three of the founding fathers are suddenly transferred to the present day (or at least the summer of 2001) wearing only the clothes on their backs, and with $100,000 in modern day currency. (Fortunately, Franklin, who liked to lounge naked or “starkers” around the house, WAS wearing clothes). In a further twist, the three men appear from the last years of their respective lives: Franklin has finished his work with the constitutional committee, Washington has just left the presidency in 1800, and Jefferson has just overseen the opening of the University of Virginia in 1825. All three men have effectively ended their public careers at these respective points, and have a year or less to live.

[Full disclosure time: Mr. Rowe employed my services to help polish some of the promotional material for his novel, and in the course of this, I expressed an interest in the contents. He asked me if I would read it and give it a review. I played no role in any stage of the preparation of the manuscript itself.]

Franklin and Washington recognize one another instantly, Jefferson with somewhat more trouble, since when they last saw him, he was over a quarter century younger. Jefferson, of course, is shocked to encounter two men who had been long dead in his experience.

The unknown agency which has transported them to modern times and given them a little seed money to boot has also seen fit to deposit them within easy walking distance of Mt. Rushmore. It takes them a while to get there since Washington has scanned the terrain and deduced that they are in Indian territory. Needless to say, Mt. Rushmore raises some questions in their minds.

The novel, which is the first of a multi-parter, doesn’t get around to explaining exactly how or why this happened to the three men. But at least one temporal anomaly manifests immediately: Jefferson clearly remembers the circumstances of the deaths of both other men, and knows they didn’t simply vanish from the face of the earth on the days they were snatched up and deposited in Lakota country.

Rowe has the three founders approach the mystery that surrounds them with creditable amounts of ingenuity and resources. They examine the money they have been given, all of which is in $100 bills, and they want to determine if the currency is degraded or if the bills have some actual value. Franklin in particular wants to know if the C-note is important or not. Once they determine that each bill has a unique serial number, they calculate the possible permutations of the serial numbers to try and determine how many bills might be in circulation. The answer leaves them wondering if $100,000 will buy them a loaf of bread.

This first novel has the three discovering the amazements and wonders (and horrors) of the 21st century, and describes their first tentative and usually disastrous efforts at interacting with contemporary Americans. Jefferson’s openly racist attitudes get them in trouble almost immediately.

The book benefits from meticulous research, and the author’s keen sense of the absurd. There are moments when it is falling down funny, such as when the founders see “Star Wars” and, while realizing that the movie itself is fiction, don’t realize that Obi-Wan Kanobi’s light saber is a special effect. Washington devotes his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to obtaining one of those. When they discover the internet, the libidinous Franklin realizes the potential for racy pictures, and Googles “wenches starkers” and is surprised and disappointed that there are only five websites that have pictures of naked women. The 16th amendment (income tax) horrifies them, and they imagine an enslaved American populace groaning under the weight of a tax that might be as high as 5%.

Like most first books, “Tempus Fugit” has its flaws. The pacing is uneven, and the dialog clunky and repetitive. There is one scene involving a confrontation between the founders and four black men in a bar that the book, frankly, would have been much better without. I feel that the author’s depiction of Jefferson as a racist and a coward is somewhat harsher than the man deserved. [More full disclosure, folks: I live in an area called “the State of Jefferson” and have a picture of old Thom on my website. No, I don’t like his views on African-Americans, but I don’t subscribe to the notion that a man’s achievements should be devalued by ex post facto mores.]

The book is due out this week, and you can order a copy at www.lawrencerowe.com.

It’s a good chance to familiarize yourself with three of America’s most important personages. It’s also a lot of fun.