The Warren Harding Incident

The footage was crystal clear. Every disgusting detail of the crime could be seen.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was recorded in brilliant, gruesome clarity. The horror of the wound and the spread of shock amongst the faces in the crowd below were saved for all time in High Definition.

Rachel Blaesing was impressed by the 360-degree holographic video of the President’s Box at Ford Theater.

“Pause,” she said. The scene around her froze immediately.

She leaned forward and closely studied the expression on John Wilkes Booth in the instant he pulled the trigger. There was an awful, hateful satisfaction on his face. It caused a small chill to run up her back. But Rachel made herself study it. Memorize it. It was an expression she had to be familiar with; the look of a murderer at the moment of the kill.

“End projection,” she said when her work was finished.

The 19th century building faded around her and was replaced with a sterile white room.

A small door slid open. A man in an equally white outfit stepped inside.

“That’s some pretty impressive footage, Williams,” Rachel said. “I’ve never seen Lincoln’s assassination in such detail. But it’s something we’ve all seen a hundred times before. Show…”

“Before you say ‘show me something new,’ tell me what you think of Booth’s face,” Williams said. “No one’s ever gotten this close to him before. Not in this moment.”

“It is very haunting,” Rachel admitted. “But again, we’ve all seen the event before. In every angle people can film it from. Hell, there was that guy from Boston last year who managed to set the camera right over Booth’s shoulder to get the Point-Of-View approach.”

Williams rolled his eyes. “Be as dismissive as you want,” he said. “But this is something important. Recording the killer as they do the deed has become a key to psychological profiling. It helps experts understand people like them. And this…” he held up the program’s memory stick, “this isn’t just some serial killer or crime of passion. This is a political assassination. The political assassination. Imagine what we could learn from it.”

“I guess…” Rachel wasn’t convinced. “Maybe if you bothered to try something more obscure. That would probably teach people a whole lot more than just the same old thing. Say, like what I’ll be filming in a few days.” She could barely hide her growing excitement.

“Oh no,” Williams smacked his forehead. “Please don’t tell me you’re going back to Warren Harding’s death! Are you seriously going through with it?”

“Of course I am,” Rachel declared. “It’s a lost part of history that needs to be told. And a murder that needs to be solved!”

“Alright, alright. I’m not going to argue,” Williams said. “I’m just surprised you got permission to make the trip.”

“I can be very persuasive,” Rachel said with a wink.

“Right… When are you going back there?”

“In a few days.”

“Uh. Well, good luck with everything, then.” Williams held out his hand.

“Appreciate it.” Rachel shook the hand. “And thanks for showing me your newest project.”

As she stepped out of the holograph room onto the elevator, the confident smile slipped from her face. Rachel sighed and leaned back against the elevator wall. She’d come so far. It had been more difficult than Williams could imagine, but she was not about to let this opportunity get away from her.

It had been an uphill fight against the University from the beginning. Every historian who wanted to record the deaths of Lincoln and Kennedy received an enthusiastic approval with no hassle. It was the same for any famous battle or disaster. The Titanic sinking and Pearl Harbor attack had a thousand recordings made by a thousand different historians.

But the death of a nearly forgotten President during peacetime? A death nearly everyone attributed to a simple heart attack? Nothing. No recordings whatsoever.

Rachel was going to change that. And in the process, she was certain, rewrite history.

The day of the journey finally arrived, and Rachel couldn’t be more anxious. She was excited to finally have the opportunity she had worked so hard for, and nervous about what truths she would find back in 1923.

As she stepped through the front doors of the National Chrononautical Center, she was immediately stopped by security. They ran her through all the tests and detectors, and triple checked her identity.

It was annoying, but Rachel couldn’t blame them for being so paranoid.

Since the invention of time travel, governments around the world kept a very close watch on all temporal displacement activities. No one could travel more than an hour back in time without the express permission from more than half a dozen federal agencies. These days the only people they allowed to travel back at all were historians and biography filmmakers.

That, of course, was why only the most popular events of history got regular visits and recordings, Rachel pondered. If someone wanted to film anything too obscure, the government saw no reason to waste the limited resources of time travel on the effort.

Unless you hound them and hound them until they finally give in, Rachel thought. She cracked a satisfied grin.

Once the security checks were completed, Rachel was led through the maze of corridors and down several flights of stairs to a small, dimly lit hallway. At the far end was a room. A sign outside the door read Section 6-Y.

“Excuse me? Are you sure this is the right place?” Rachel asked her guide.

The woman answered in the affirmative and left to return to the front desk security.

That anxious feeling got even worse. Despite the doubt, Rachel pushed on and stepped into the room. A musty smell washed over her. The sight inside wasn’t any better. Out-of-date equipment stood around the place. Several pieces were collecting cobwebs. The control panel was cluttered with papers and used coffee cups.

“What the hell did I get myself into?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, the second least important room in the whole complex,” a voice answered behind her.

Rachel jumped at the sound. A very skinny man in a lab coat stepped out from amongst the mess.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to spook ya,” the man said. “I’m Martin. You must be today’s appointment.” Without waiting for an answer, he rushed over to the control panel and fired up the machine.

“Umm, yes,” Rachel said. She watched the man work the many buttons and dials that controlled the complex system that made time travel possible. “Wait. What do you mean the least important room?”

“The second least important room,” Martin corrected without bothering to look up from his work. “The least important is Section 6-Z down the hallway. That’s mostly rich people paying out of pocket to watch the best moments of their own lives play out all over again. A big sale at work, or the high school Prom dance, or the best lay of your life. Stuff like that.”

“Sounds delightful,” Rachel remarked flatly. “So, what about this room then?”

“The historic events recorded by historians that no one cares about.” Martin was brutally honest, Rachel noticed. She had to bite her tongue to stop from telling him off.

“But then again those rich weirdos on Section 6-Z keep the lights on around here,” Martin continued. “Of course, we send them back with a professional, just to make sure they don’t try something funny and get themselves hurt. All sorts of troubles happen when people try to change the past. But we don’t have to worry about you going off and trying something foolish like that, do we?”

“It’s not my first time going back. I know what to do,” Rachel reassured him.

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s… well, its my second time going back, but that should still count for something.”

“What was the first trip?” Martin asked.

“I was helping a colleague film… film the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.” Rachel answered in a low voice. She was still embarrassed to have been part of such an exploitive project.

“Ah, that’s a good one. Very scary to watch.” Martin flipped a large switch. A whole wall shelf of gadgets flashed to life. “So, I don’t have to explain all the rules to you. Don’t let yourself be seen. Don’t try to change the past. It never works out well.”

“Yes I know. I…”

“Because the Universe stops people from trying to change the past,” Martin explained anyway despite Rachel’s protests. He grabbed one of the devices off the shelf and began to tinker with it. “Time travelers tend to get hurt or die in awful random accidents before they can change anything.”

“Yes, and…”

“Unless Predestination Paradoxes are true, but so far none have ever been confirmed.” Martin looked at Rachel – possibly for the first time in the whole interaction. A genuine look of wonder flashed on his face. “Do you think they’re possible? You know, Causal Loop Theory where the history we know was, in reality, caused by time travelling?”

“I wouldn’t pretend to know,” Rachel said. “I’m a historian, not a physicist. But I can tell you there’s no evidence for it in the historical record.”

The wonder disappeared. Martin shrugged. “Well, I think it would be neat if they were.”

Rachel didn’t know what to say. She figured the guy didn’t get out of his basement lab too often.

“So, when and where are you heading?” Martin asked.

“San Francisco, California on August 1, 1923.”

“Well, that’s not as far back as a lot of people who come here, but it’s still important to remember the operations and rules for the camouflage tech,” Martin said. He punched several buttons on the device. “As long as it’s working, it’ll stop you from being seen or touched by anyone.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Rachel said again.

The touch of a final button, and a web of fabric flew around her. Everything seemed unchanged from her point of view, but Rachel knew the fabric of the camouflage tech made her all but invisible.

Another button, and the fabric flickered to allow Martin to see her as he finished his work.

“So why you going there?” he asked absentmindedly.

“To prove Warren Harding was murdered!” Rachel answered proudly.

“Who?”

“Warren G. Harding. 29th President of the United States.” She was met with a blank stare. “President from 1921 to 1923. He was the first president elected after women gained the right to vote. Led the country in the years after World War I.”

Another shrug. “Never heard of him,” Martin said. “Must not have been too important a guy.” Rachel once again had to bite her tongue to stop from yelling at the clueless man. “But I guess if someone didn’t like him enough to shoot him, that…”

“He wasn’t shot, he was poisoned!” Rachel interjected.

“What?”

Rachel rubbed her temple in frustration. It was something she’d heard so often, she lost count of the times. But it never stopped irritating her.

“Harding was a… complicated man,” she explained. “While he was President, his administration had a profound impact on post-war America. But he was also a notorious womanizer. Notorious even in his own time. In fact, he had a child with one of his much younger mistresses, who eventually went public with the story.”

“Gross,” Martin said, his eyes back on the machines he was working with.

“Yes it was,” Rachel agreed. “But it ended in an even worse place. In 1923, Harding took a Presidential trip to the West Coast. During the trip, he took sick. His wife, Florence Harding, cared for him and worked with the doctors to help him recover, until he got worse and died. It’s officially accepted that he died of a heart attack brought about by the illness.

“But there are people, including myself, who believe he was actually murdered –poisoned– by the First Lady in an act of revenge for the humiliation she’d suffered from his infidelities. I aim to prove it true!”

“Prove that the President was murdered by the First Lady?” Martin looked at her again. “Now that would make for a dramatic story, and a good recording. If it’s true.”

“It is true!” Rachel said. “And I’ll have it all on video for everyone to see!”

“Right,” Martin said. He slipped the control device over Rachel’s wrist and snapped it tight. “The equipment we have down here is a little old. It can be tricky to work with. That includes the camouflage tech. Just take it slow and don’t overwork it. Understand?”

Rachel nodded.

“Good.” He then attached the various cameras to Rachel’s shoulders, around the waist and on her other hand. Each one would record a different direction to get the full picture of wherever she was. “These should all be good to go.”

The control device on her wrist would allow her to operate the cameras and camouflage tech. To see everything while remaining unseen. Rachel knew she was ready to discover the truth.

“About damn time,” she complained.

Travelling through time and space is a very bizarre experience. Rachel didn’t like the sensation in the least. It felt like an awful combination of dropping down a rollercoaster and lifting up in an airplane at the same time. But the trip was short, and the experience ended abruptly.

When the world finally stopped spinning, Rachel looked around at the sunny, warm weather of San Francisco. A moment later, the first of several Model T’s drove down the muddy street.

Rachel marveled at the sight. People strolled down the sidewalks in old-fashioned outfits. At least, they’re old fashions where I’m from, she thought. They’re in vogue here and now.

A careful step forward onto the busy sidewalk proved she was invisible to everyone. People passed by without a second glance even as she waved her arms around wildly. No reactions from the crowd.

Good. Now it’s time to go to work.

She made her way through the crowded streets to the Palace Hotel. The beautiful building stood high over the wide Market Street. It still looked new now, having been almost completely rebuilt after the original hotel had been destroyed during the Earthquake of 1906.

It proved tricky moving between the people in the hallways and stairways, but Rachel finally made it to Room 8064, where President Harding was staying to recuperate. And where his wife, the First Lady, was plotting her revenge. Rachel was sure of it.

With extreme caution, she snuck into the room, and found the way into the bedroom. There, laying in the large bed, was the man Rachel had studied and read about for years: President Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States.

The man looked old, even for his 57 years. He had been suffering through a bout of pneumonia for the last several days.

Rachel knew from her studies that he’d been giving a series of speeches in California until his health took a turn. In here, he’d been ordered on bed rest while the doctors helped as best they could.

They probably would have saved him, if not for Florence’s interference, Rachel thought. She checked her control device to make sure all the cameras were recording. I’m going to catch her in the act of poisoning the President!

For a moment, the device on her wrist froze. It seemed to struggle in its operation. Damn it! she swore and pushed the button again. After a few more presses, the device finally confirmed the cameras were all working as needed.

Now I just sit and wait for everything to unfold.

Wait she did. For hours, Rachel sat in an unused corner of the room, recording the President, the First Lady, and the many other people coming and going. The visitors included advisors, local politicians, and well-wishers. She kept an eye on all of them, as did the cameras on her person. But through all the commotion, she never stopped watching Florence Harding, who never left her husband’s side.

Harding coughed hard.

Several people in the room turned to look, but he waved away their concerns.

“I’ll be right as rain soon,” he said. “Just give me a day to rest. You’ll see.”

“Don’t tease the men, Warren,” Florence Harding said. “They have the right to worry about you. You’re an important man with a stubborn ailment! Stop acting like you aren’t.”

Harding winked at her before another coughing fit began.

The warmness of their interaction caught Rachel by surprise. Harding was an adulterer, and his wife knew it. Yet there was a caring nature to their conversation. More than that, there was love.

That’s unexpected. But Rachel was determined to go on and record the poisoning that must happen.

More hours passed. Butt-kissers came and went, but Florence didn’t leave the President’s side. Nor did Rachel.

She kept a close eye on the water Harding was drinking. Nothing was added. Nothing was slipped in.

Day led into night. The President fell asleep, and his wife finally left to sleep in the room next door. Rachel followed her. But no poison or toxin was ever produced. When the next morning came, Rachel was waiting for the First Lady when she returned to the President’s room.

August 2 was very similar to the previous day. People were either trying to help the President, or trying ask a request of him.

On the very evening President Harding was going to die, Rachel refused to give up on discovering the truth.

It’s now or never, she realized. These were his final moments. If the murder she suspected took place did occur, it was now.

Rachel worked the control device on her wrist to make the recording as detailed as possible. For a moment, the device flickered, but she ignored it.

“I have a review from the last speech you gave, darling,” Florence said. “It’s from the Saturday Evening Post. I wondered you might appreciate to hear it. It’s titled ‘A Calm Review of a Calm Man.’

Harding gave his approval, and his wife began to read.

“No President is a hero to his politicians. He is a producer to them. Nor is any President a hero to the other Party’s politicians. He is a usurper to them.”

The speech went on, as familiar to Rachel as any childhood nursery rhyme.

“A curious obsession of the public mind is that although a President is, necessarily, a creation of politics, and himself political, both in origin and in office, he had no business to be a politician after he becomes President.”

President Harding chuckled at the line. The chuckle turned into a cough. “I’m quite alright,” he said. “Please continue.”

“Of course, darling,” Florence said. She continued to read. “This man Harding is neither noisy nor brilliant, in a showy acceptance of the term. He is not loud and declamatory. He is a modest man –too modest no doubt– and a calm man, and a man of philosophy that has not worked out so badly, as will be shown.”

Florence was interrupted by an even worse fit by the President.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” the First Lady asked.

Harding managed to stop. “That’s good. Go on, read some more.”

The line triggered alarms in Rachel’s mind. Those are his last words, she remembered. With growing confusion, she looked to Florence Harding’s hands. There wasn’t a poison capsule or container in sight, nor had there been in the last 24 hours. She was sure the footage from her cameras would confirm as much.

There has to be more going on than that. There has to be! What else would kill him? Surely not the claimed ‘heart-attack!’

Rachel struggled with the control device on her wrist, double-checking all the cameras. There has to be more!

Her fingers worked the control buttons, and the gadget flickered from overwork. Goddamn it, just work! Rachel thought. She punched another button, and the whole gadget started screaming.

For an instant, the camouflage tech stopped working, and Rachel watched as both Warren and Florence Harding discovered she was there, standing at the foot of the bed.

“Shit…” Rachel said.

“What…” Warren exclaimed with an obvious panic growing on his face.

“What are you?” Florence asked in the same breath.

“What…” Warren repeated before his eyes went unfocused. His hand grabbed at his left shoulder with growing terror.

“Go away!” Florence shouted at Rachel. “Go away!”

Rachel quickly punched a command into the device on her wrist. “Come on, come on!” Eventually, finally, the camouflage tech turned back on and hid her from sight.

But the damage was done. Warren Harding clinched his chest.

His wife, in growing hysterics, cried out for help from any doctor who could hear her.

In the coming minutes, Rachel could only watch as the President died from a heart attack. Without an ounce of poison or toxin in his system.

Then, amongst the growing panic of the people in the room, the truth of what had just happened occurred to Rachel.

“Oh…” she said aloud, not bothering to care who heard her speak. “Oh shit.”

Without another word, she typed a final command into the device to return home. No one in the room noticed her disappear.