Orbicular Gridlock

New York City on a Friday afternoon, was everybody headed out of town? Traffic would suddenly move as if now it was clearing, but then nope. Sitting, waiting, the frustration was oppressive. As a NYPD detective, Dave had a blue light on his dash and a siren. Dave hated using the siren, it was so loud. But even using his lights and siren he would literally have had to drive on the sidewalk to escape the confining traffic. Dave had driven on the sidewalk before during a pursuit, but sidewalk driving was stressful and pretty high risk. Better have a really good reason for doing it, that’s for sure. Dave stared through the windshield and swatted a fly away from his face. The dumpster on the side street was surrounded by flies and was a little too close. The temperature was nice, but he rolled up his window for the moment. Bonnie, his partner, a female in her late 20’s was equally bored. Dave and Bonnie worked well together. Dave, a few years older than Bonnie, was an excellent problem-solver and had great street-instincts. He was powerfully built and an excellent ally in a confrontation. Bonnie was brilliant. She had dropped out of a doctorate program years ago to become one of New York’s finest. She wanted to make a difference. Dave was always impressed by her brilliance and had long ago learned to listen to her and to follow her intuition. Her intuition was scary accurate.  

Dave reviews their assignment attempting to reduce the frustration level. “So, this guy says that everyone in his building has vanished and that he is the only one in his entire apartment building?”

“Well, yes and no. He is the only one on his floor. He has explored some of the other floors. They seem to be barren as well. I think that he is concluding that he is alone in the building.”

The cars all lurch forward covering almost a full block. Just as quickly, traffic stops. They both are anticipating the stop.

“Yes, he claims that he has not seen anyone in the building in ten days. He does offer some proof.”

“Proof. What kind of proof?”

Bonnie mulls over the report, “Well, the cars parked in the parking deck under the building are all covered in dust indicating that they have not moved in almost two weeks. Also, a local Chinese take-out placed menus in the door jab of a number of the apartments and the menus have not been moved. He says that he watches the elevators in the middle of his hallway and there is almost no elevator traffic. The elevators mainly just sit there.”

“What? No way.”

“There is a coffee shop at the end of this block. I am going to step out and grab a Latte. Want something?”

“You know Latte roughly translates into English as ‘you paid too much for that coffee’.”

“Ok then, I will take that as a ‘No’. If traffic suddenly clears, you had better not leave me.”

“Ok.”

“I am not kidding.”

Dave smiles as Bonnie unbuckles and steps out of the stationary vehicle for a coffee. With coffee in hand, Bonnies continues to read through the report. Reading aloud, “The subject’s name is Wilson Zeit. He claims to be a time traveler from the near future and it appears he may want to file a missing person claim for several thousand people. That part is not too clear, not sure what he is proposing”

“Well Bonnie, as a fellow time traveler myself maybe I should take the lead on this one.”

“What, you never told me that before!”

“You know that line where the Eastern Time Zone and Central Time Zone meet. Yeah, well I stepped back and forth over that line a number of times one afternoon. I was basically traveling an hour back and forth through time.”

“Please stop talking. Maybe you should just follow my lead on this one.”

The apartment building in question was small by New York standards. The building was a twelve-story brownstone with a small basement parking deck located on Stuyvesant Street. Wilson Zeit answered his door. He was a smallish man with thinning dark hair peppered with gray. 

“Hello Mr. Zeit. I am Detective David Stark and this is Detective Bonnie Sage.  I understand you want to file a missing persons report for several thousand of your neighbors.”

Wilson scratches his chin.  “Well, I am not sure what is the appropriate approach. My neighbors are missing or maybe more accurately would be to say that they never existed. Their homes and stuff are still here.”

“Uh… Ok, it says in the report that you are a time traveler.”

“Well, yes I am. I am a Time Tourist from the proximate future. I am a retiree; my plan was to stay here. Unfortunately, I think they have too many tourists in the loop. The sheer numbers have caused some kind of change. The original timeline has changed. Which means the future is also changing.  If the timeline alters too much, then my existence is also in jeopardy. I am afraid that all of the people in this building are victims of a time-shift paradox. The future stands on the actions of the past.  It is normal for things to change. The time line is constantly changing due to well, you know the whole free will thing. People aren’t robots. They make choices. These choices effect the future, the Grand Timeline so to speak. The future can and does change. In this case though, something really big has happened.”

Dave grins, “If you really are from the future, then tell me something that will happen today or sometime soon”.

Wilson rubbed his eyes and spoke very slowly, “The reason Nostradamus spoke in an encrypted way was to prevent from altering the timeline. If people know for certain that a stock will drop or dramatically rise, or that a bridge will fail on a certain date, then people will react and the event is changed or it doesn’t happen at all. I could foretell small events to convince you, but even under normal conditions the smaller events may vary significantly as the timeline moves forward. It really would not prove anything. Believe me, something big is going on here. I am not really sure what the appropriate course of action is.”

“Ok. We have taken your statement. We are going to have a look around. Mr. Zeit, do you have the telephone number for the building superintendent handy?”

“Yes, I will be glad to provide it. Let me tell you what you will find here. You will find these apartments have no one in them. There will be furniture, clothing, photographs, but no people. They are not missing, they never existed. Even their families may not remember them.  If the Great Timeline changes enough, many people will simply never exist.”

Dave and Bonnie begin walking down the hallway knocking on doors. Bonnie makes her way to the elevators. Dave continues to knock on doors as he goes.

“Bonnie, you don’t believe this guy, do you?”

“Well, nobody is coming to their doors. No one is in the hallway. Elevator traffic is virtually at a standstill. I am trying not to jump to any conclusions. This case should be pretty easy to prove one way or the other. I am trying to evaluate the evidence before us. Just because something is outside the main stream of beliefs does not automatically mean it is false. There are many wide spread beliefs that have been proven to be false. The Copernican Revolution, the Sun as it turns out does not revolve around the Earth. More recently, look at the widely accepted theory of evolution. It is completely unsupported by the fossil record and it violates the third law of thermodynamics, entropy. All reactions decay and cool. The ball will roll unassisted down the stairs, but never up. The boiling pot of water will spontaneously cool down when heat is removed. It will never spontaneously boil. The process described by Evolution moves in the opposite direction from all of the other reactions in our Universe. Proteins smashing together growing into something more complex violates the very basics of science. Evolution from my perspective, would have to be a type of perpetual motion machine. Likewise, this current situation may be outside the normal way of thinking, but it should be simple to prove one way or the other. Ignore presuppositions, don’t let accepted norms cloud your judgement and just focus on the facts.”

“Bonnie, please stop you’re making my head hurt. So, what is the plan? How do we investigate this thing?”

“Let’s start with leg work.  We need to step away from the subjective. We need to quantify.  Let’s determine how many people reside in this building. We should start with the Super and see how many units are actually occupied and then we can go door to door and count the number of units that do not answer.”

New York City on a Friday afternoon, was everybody headed out of town? Traffic would suddenly move as if now it was clearing, but then nope. Sitting, waiting, the frustration was oppressive. Dave stares through the windshield and swats a fly away from his face. He sees a dumpster and rolls up his window. Dave reviews their assignment attempting to reduce the frustration level as they drive along. 

“Wow, I almost called you Bonnie! Where did that come from?”

“What?”

“Sorry Dan, so this guy says that everyone in his building has vanished and that he is the only one left in his entire apartment building?”

“What are you talking about? We are going to take a statement on a domestic dispute.”

Dave scratches his head, “I just had a major case of déjà vu.”

Dave and his partner Dan work well together, but Dan is certainly no Bonnie.