John Schettler - Meridian

“Look at this! It’s in almost pristine condition.” They were staring at a strangely familiar shape embedded in the rock face. It was an almost perfectly preserved fossil, over two meters wide; a beautifully regular shell that curved in a graceful arc from the edge of the ridge. There were long, tubular extensions from the base of the shell that reached out for several feet in curvy parallel lines before they vanished beneath the russet crust of the ground.

“What is that?”

“It’s an Ammonite!” Nordhausen smiled. “They were large squid-like creatures—very ancient. Look at the preservation! I’ve never seen anything like it; particularly exposed to the elements like this. It’s hardly calcified.”

“But what’s it doing here?”

“Oh, they’ve found quite a few fossils like this in the region,” said Nordhausen. “This whole area was once a shallow sea bed swarming with these big fellows. But that was millions of years ago. In some locations in Jordan, such as the Ajloun region, Ammonite fossils were found in building stone. Most of the time you can hardly recognize them, as their hard shells are deeply embedded in the soft limestone. You’d never see one like this!” He circled the find with obvious admiration. “Why, it’s too complete, and too well preserved.” His voice began to take on a hollow tone, losing its enthusiasm.

“It’s too young.” Paul came to the obvious conclusion, and each one looked at the other, as though waiting for an answer that would lead them out of the dilemma that was becoming ever more apparent to them.

“Shocked quartz, glass tektite bead deposits, withered fern—”

“And Ammonites.” Paul folded his arms, as much to console himself as to fend off the chill of the morning. They stared at the fossil and then looked around them at the roiling sky. The horizon was still blood-red, lightening to shades of ocher and orange. The sun was making no headway against the overriding gloom above them.

“What’s it all mean, Robert?”

“Well,” Nordhausen gathered his caliph’s robe about him and sat down, square on the smooth rounded shell of the Ammonite fossil. “It means we may very well be in Jordan, but I’m damn well certain it’s not 1917.”

Maeve stood in the great oval entrance to the Arch corridor. The sliding doors were open and she could still see the strange, milky auroras of light swirling between the metallic ribs of the Arch itself. There was a solid yellow line on the floor, and she edged toward it cautiously, keeping well back. The sound of the generators was slowly winding down, and the vibration under her feet stilled itself. She called out for Paul and Robert, peering into the montage of dissipating color, but heard only the returning echo of her own voice.

They were gone.

A flood of emotions arose as she considered the full implications of that. On the one hand she was relieved to see that the two men were not lying dead on the cold metal flooring of the corridor. The breaching sequence had worked—it had all worked —and the two men had vanished from the present Meridian into the ocean of time. Where they would emerge was anybody’s guess. They could be anywhere, though she hoped Kelly’s optimism might prove true. Now her mind returned to the error readings on the temporal vector display. The error had been numerically small. It might only be a matter of hours or days, which was the whole point of shading the temporal breaching point on the negative side of the event. Nothing could be done if they arrived too late. Early was always workable, she concluded.

Satisfied that there was nothing she could do here for the moment, she turned and headed back toward the elevator shaft, her mind still cluttered with thoughts of Kelly and the strange call from her mother. The digital clock on the elevator wall gave her a moment’s anxiety. It was nearly 3:00 AM!

Up in the control room she found Kelly hunched over his laptop, his finger tapping on a touch pad as he scrolled through a long series of numbers and formulae.

“Looking for footprints?” Maeve leaned on the back of his chair, and he gave her a tentative glance. She could see the guilt in his eyes, and the fear.

“They got through, didn’t they.”

“They went somewhere,” said Maeve. “I hope you’re going to tell me where in a second. What was the variance on the temporal readout?” She looked at Jen, but the young woman had an odd look on her face, not following what they were talking about.

“Mr. Ramer?” Jen hesitated to answer the question, prodding Kelly for help.

Kelly took a deep breath before he spoke again. “Well,” he began, “I found the error. Must have been typing fast when I entered the shading variables. I was trying to type a number sequence and I accidentally hit the shift key with my other hand.”

“And?” Maeve was waiting for the implications of Kelly’s confession.

Kelly looked at Jen for a moment, ready to come clean. “I triggered a macro I had programmed for my calculations and one of the numbers was interpreted as an exponential…”

Maeve just stared at him. “An exponential? Good God, what was the number?”

“A big one, relatively speaking.” Kelly rubbed at a trickle of perspiration on his forehead. “It raised the temporal locus variable by powers of ten instead of single integer increments. That means the readout on Jen’s board is actually reporting a much greater temporal shift than I first thought.”

“Powers of ten?” Maeve’s jaw dropped as her mind spawned a hundred fears from Kelly’s statement. It was not a matter of hours or days any longer. It was long years; decades; centuries. If they went back too far they could even run the risk of materializing under a primordial ocean! It was all too much for her, and she covered her eyes with her hand, not wanting to wrestle with the problem for a moment.

“But I have a plan,” Kelly offered. “Remember the loop command I sent through the system? I attached the pattern signatures of both Robert and Paul—you know, from the infusion data.”

“What? Kelly, the loop command was for a temporary suspension of the breaching cycle. You can’t loop the system after the infusion’s occurred!”

“Yes, under normal circumstances that would be right. But when I realized what was happening I had to do something. It was the only thing I could think of, short of simply cutting the mains and shutting the damn thing down. That probably would have killed them both in the Arch, so I ran the numbers and keyed a looping variable instead.”

“You ran the numbers? I was there, Kelly. You never went anywhere near the logarithmic generator.”

“Well… I did the calculation in my head…” The statement sounded feeble, but it was the truth and Kelly owned up to it, a bit flustered but determined. “I knew what I was trying to key for the variable, and I did the math in my head.”

“Without machine verification?” Maeve was staggered. “You mean you just took a random shot in the dark, right?”

“Well give me some credit. Look, I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got a twenty minute window and I need to make some adjustments on the chamber.”

“Adjustments? We’ve got to get them back, Kelly.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do—at least get them back on the correct coordinate.”

Maeve didn’t understand. “You planned for an emergency retraction, didn’t you?”

Jen heard the word and remembered her brief conversation with Dorland before he had left. “Doctor Dorland said something about—”

“Then do it, Kelly.” Maeve interrupted, her attention fully focused on Kelly. “As soon as possible! The world will just have to suffer for this. If you can get them back somehow…” She looked at the telephone that was still hanging limply over the edge of the desk by its cord and remembered her mother again. There was nothing she could do, and the tension and frustration of the moment welled as tears in her eyes as she spoke.