The Titanic Paradox
by
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Dan’s momentum could not be stopped, and he found himself caught between the lifeboat and the Titanic. With his feet on the gunnel rail of the lifeboat and his arms outstretched holding on to the ropes, he looked below at the blackness that awaited him.
The boat was at capacity and the crew members were tired. Their arm muscles were exhausted. Their hands were frost-bitten and bleeding from rope burns. They still tried to keep the lifeboats level as they lowered them into the ocean, but the process was complicated by the ever-increasing angle of the deck.
Dan felt the lifeboat slip. Losing his footing, he fell toward the ship and away from the lifeboat. He was able to hold onto the rope, but as he swung back, he hit the side of the ship hard. The pain from his previous injuries sent what felt like electrical shocks through his back and shoulder.
Lizzy screamed, “Come back. I can’t do this alone. I will not do this alone. We were supposed to be together, no matter what.” Lizzy clutched Laura as Laura held tightly to her.
Dan knew that he could only hold on for a few more moments. “I will get on another boat. I will meet up with you as soon as I can. I will find you! We will be together again. I promise.”
“Swear to me!”
Dan hung to the ropes until he could see that Lifeboat #4 had been released. He prayed for a miracle. His hands were numb, and he knew he could not hold on for much longer. He saw Lizzy and Laura’s lifeboat moving away from the ship as the two crew men in the lifeboat rowed as if their lives depended on it—and they did. He had done all he could do. Barring divine intervention, Dan was seeing his wife for the last time.
At 2:15 a.m., the deck was at a 45° angle to the water line, making it impossible for anyone on deck to stand without holding on to something. It was like trying to keep your footing while standing at the epicenter of an earthquake. Those that could not find something to hold on to slid down the deck into the water below.
All the ladies sitting around Lizzy had lost loved ones in the last hour. In this small wooden island in the middle of the ocean, the pain of loss was so concentrated it could not be shared. No one could bear any more heartache than they were already enduring. Each member of this small community was so full of grief that despair was their only common bond. As the lifeboat moved away from the others, the only sound in the open ocean was that of anguish.
Lizzy looked up into the night sky and offered a prayer for John and the others who might perish tonight. It was the same sky and the same stars that she and John had watched from the deck only nights ago. They were as bright as they had been, but Lizzy saw no beauty in them tonight. The ocean was nothing but black emptiness that she feared had stolen her husband and her future. Her heart was filled with the same black emptiness. She would never be able to see the night sky again and smile.
Dan watched as Lizzy’s lifeboat pulled away from the foundering ship. He had to know if it was far enough away that it would not be pulled under by the enormous suction created by the Titanic as it sank. Once he knew they were safe, he let go of the ropes.
Within two more minutes, Lizzy saw the bow of the Titanic in the distance sink below the waterline as the ship broke in half. The bow began its final trip to the bottom of the ocean only to be joined by the stern shortly afterwards.
At that split second when Dan fell toward the water, he realized it. He had never fully understood why he had been sent back to the Titanic. There was no way he could have known. He realized that he had accomplished his mission and rectified an historical error. But in the process, he had created a larger problem. He knew it now. There was no time for corrections. He could only continue his fall into the frigid water. He cursed this newly obtained realization and asked to no one in particular, “Why did this have to be a secret? If you had just let me know, I could have gotten it right.”
Hitting the water from the height of the deck was like falling into a brick wall. The impact with the frigid water almost stopped his heart. The drag created by the sinking ship pulled Dan deeper and deeper into the ocean.
There was not going to be another lifeboat for him. He was not going to be rescued. At least, John and Lizzy Franklin would not die tonight in their cabin together. Dan would die alone in the North Atlantic Ocean, half a world away from his home in Tennessee and a century before his time.
Dan heard a new voice in his head—one he had not heard before. The voice gently offered, “You did what was asked of you. It had to be done this way. It was not your choice to make.”
As his life slipped out of his grasp, he forgave himself for what he could not have known. It was some consolation that he had been married to Lizzy, even if only for a short while. Dan’s last thoughts were of John’s words to Lizzy, “The brilliance of this night sky is nothing compared to what I see in your eyes. Every time I look into them, I will remember tonight.”
And John remembered because Dan no longer existed—nor would he until the year 2000.
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About the Book
In 2022, Dan Hunt and his wife drive to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to visit the Titanic Museum for a weekend get-away. Instead of the vacation that he had planned, Dan finds himself pulled into a situation well beyond his control and understanding.
Dan awakes on April 13, 1912, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean with his new wife on their honeymoon. With no grasp as to why or how he got there, Dan must try to pass himself off as John Franklin, an employee of Harland and Wolff and one of the architects of the Titanic.
Hosted in the body of John Franklin, Dan has John’s memories as well as his own. He will only have a couple of days to save the ship, or at a minimum, save himself and his new wife. With the remembrances of his previous life slowly fading from his memory, his plight is complicated. If he just knew why he had been sent back to the Titanic.
Meanwhile John Franklin finds himself catapulted into the twenty first century where things have changed for the worse, due to Dan’s interference 110 years earlier. Begrudgingly Dan and John will have to work together to resolve the The Titanic Paradox.
About the Author
R. L. Corn has penned over twenty short stories, is the author of several magazine articles, and recently co-authored a novel (Always Thaddeus: The Resurrection) with his wife. He enjoys restoring MGs, collecting and playing vintage guitars. Corn co-owns an antique store in Banner Elk, North Carolina.