John Schettler - Meridian

“Take it easy, Maeve.” Kelly was up, extending an arm to comfort her. “This is all my fault, but I have a plan. You’ll see.” He nodded to Jen, waving her away from the scene so he could talk with Maeve in private. “Why don’t you see about getting some tea for us all,” said Kelly. “Or better yet, I think Maeve has a bag of fresh Peets coffee we could brew. How about it, Jen?”

“Sure,” Jen helped Maeve to a chair, and Kelly noticed the dangling telephone. He walked over and hung the phone up, winking at Maeve as he did so.

“You’ll call her in the morning,” he said confidently. “Coffee, Jen. I have about fifteen minutes left to make this adjustment, and I don’t want any more mistakes.”

“Then everything is OK with Mr. Dorland and the Professor?”

“They’re fine,” said Kelly.

“I think I left the bag in the changing room with the costumes.” Maeve waved halfheartedly at the doorway.

“Right.” Jen ran off to fetch the coffee, leaving them alone for a moment.

“Trust me.” Kelly raised his eyebrows looking at Maeve. “I can do this,” he explained. “I was even sure I had the right number when I did the factor mentally. Just give me ten minutes here and I’ll have things straightened out again.”

“But how?” Maeve wanted to be convinced, but her mind could see no way out of the dilemma.

“It’s a theory I’ve been working on. I know it hasn’t been run through your committee yet, but let me explain. When the tachyon infusion floods the corridor we get a good signature on anyone inside and store it in the pattern buffers. I connected the buffers to the retraction module for situations just like this. I was trying to figure a way we could retract on command in an emergency instead of waiting for the half-life decay sequence. So… I entered a loop command during infusion, and got two signatures.”

He smiled, holding up two fingers to emphasize his point. “When the system rolls data in the pattern buffers through the retraction module I’ll have two chances to plan an operation. Normally the retraction sequence can only operate when the target time has been reached. We used the particle half-life scheme as a fail-safe at the end. If they go back too far to reach the target date, the half-life in the chamber expires and they get pulled out. But if I can plan an operation, and time it for a very specific point in the half-life decay sequence, there’s a chance to move them before the fail-safe kicks in at the end. With the loop method I can program a retraction sequence for every loop I enter. In this case I just divided the half-life duration by two and set a point for the first retraction opportunity. That gives me a chance to bring them home at the mid-point in the half life sequence… Or a chance to move them somewhere else.” He let that last bit hang, watching Maeve’s reaction carefully.

Maeve was struggling to follow the theory. “Move them?”

“Right. I can try to push them forward in time to the correct temporal coordinates! They went back too far. We both realize that now. If it was more than a few decades—”

“Hell, it was more than a few centuries, Kelly. Probably millennia!”

“Same difference,” Kelly said quickly. “They would die long before they reached the target time, so we can’t use it for retraction. That only leaves one other chance to move them—the emergency retraction sequence that was keyed to the particle half-life setting.”

“But Kelly,” Maeve still had an exasperated look on her face. “Have you looked at the time? The tsunami sequence is going to slam into the east coast in less than two hours!”

“Yes, but I can alter the half-life timing by removing material. I’ve thought about this for some time, Maeve. If I enrich the particle medium I can get a longer half-life sequence in the chamber, but if I thin it out…”

“That’s dangerous, Kelly.” Maeve had a warning in her eyes. “If you upset the particle generation you could loose the whole array. Then we’d have nothing to time the emergency retraction.”

“We’ll have to risk it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she protested. “You’re alive.”

“Yes, I know. I’m supposed to be dead.” Kelly looked away from her.

Maeve softened her tone. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But it’s true nonetheless. A lot of other people are going to be dead as well, unless I pull this thing off.” He paused for a moment, meeting her eyes. “Look, Maeve. Tell me you absolutely forbid this as head of Outcomes and Consequences, and I’ll stop right now. Then Paul and Robert languish in the void and, if they manage to survive, the retraction sequence will pull them out… whatever is left of them. In the meantime the whole Eastern Seaboard pays a visit to the bottom of the sea. Now—If I pull this off, and I’ve got ten minutes left, I have a good chance of moving them forward to the correct coordinates. I’ve already corrected the variables. All I have to do is time the particle chamber for the decay. Then, when the sequence reaches the half-way marker, the loop I sent through the system will run the retraction module as if it were bringing them home—only it will target the new coordinates I set instead. I can move them, Maeve. You’ve got to believe me.”

He stared at her, waiting in a long, tense moment. She looked at the floor, uncertain. All of her instincts screamed at her to forbid the whole thing. It was bad enough that they were tampering with the root ends of fate itself. What were they doing here? Paul was right, she thought. This is dangerous. We are dangerous—the most dangerous people in the world.

“They’re my friends.” Kelly put in one last word as he waited her out.

She decided.

“Do it.”

The words slipped out, but she gave Kelly a sympathetic glance, trying to force a smile to her lips. “But get the math right, damnit!”

“Already done,” said Kelly. He was heading for the element chamber controls when Jen came in with a carafe of coffee. “I’ll take the first cup over here.” He pointed at the half-life chamber monitors, and Jen hovered over with a steaming hot cup of Major Dickason’s blend. Kelly took one whiff and his mind was suddenly clear on what he had to do.

“Love this stuff,” he said as he settled into a chair.

He was soon hard at work, running a few calculations on his laptop and keying information into the chamber controls. He was going to thin out the mixture, and the particle density should fall off to a point where his first retraction trigger should kick in. All he had to do was time it to a certain density. He slid over to the retraction module, noticing how Jen seemed to be staring at the controls there with a worried expression on her face.

“Excuse me, young lady.” Kelly slipped into the chair. Maeve came up behind them and was looking over his shoulder as he worked. There were still five minutes until his first retraction opportunity. He flipped a series of switches and gave a command to feed the original pattern signature data into the retraction module. A red warning light flashed on the screen, catching him by surprise.

“Now what is this?” He squinted at the computer dialogue, which read: Out of memory. Please close applications or clear module memory before proceeding.

Jen started to say something. “I was going to say that Doctor Dorland told me—”

“There should be plenty of memory in this module!” Kelly was not happy. He moved the mouse pointer to view the registers and saw something he did not expect. “Who’s been screwing around with this thing?”

“Well I was going—” Jen tried again, but Kelly’s mind was racing ahead to a wrong conclusion.