John Schettler - Meridian

“Will they be on the right spatial coordinates?”

“I hope so.”

Maeve didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean you hope so? Can’t you tell?”

“Well, it depends if they’ve moved or not when they were on their original breaching point. This was just a temporal shift. I left the spatial variables as they were. The shift just moved them forward in time, that’s all. The only spatial variance would be the proximity algorithm—you know, so they won’t materialize inside a boulder or under water. That could separate them a bit. The quantum gravity matrix handles that. But if they wandered off at the original site, they’re likely to be off by that much on this shift. I wouldn’t worry about it. How far could they go?”

“But what about the time differential,” Maeve was still fishing, driven by her natural instinct to leave no stone unturned. She wanted things right, ever so right, and the untidy nature of this first breach of the continuum was unnerving. “They’ve only been gone a few minutes here, but in the alternate time they could have lived out years.”

“Theoretically.”

“Yes, theoretically—it’s all about the theory at this point, but we’re making it practical now. We’ve got to be careful, and we have to get it right. Isn’t there a way you can see about their spatial shift?”

Kelly thought for a minute. “Well, there should be a signal trace I could run down. Then I could do a comparison study on the spatial coordinates relative to the trace—”

“Run it down.” Maeve waved a hand at the consoles, gesturing randomly at the intimidating wall of machinery as she prodded Kelly to action.

“Now? I was going to work on the particle chamber and make sure it’s set right for the final retraction. If I don’t balance the element sampling right it could be critical.”

“You mean we might not get them back?”

“Look, we’ll get them back, OK?” Kelly gave her a frustrated look. “I just think I’d better fine tune the chamber to be sure. It will only take about ten minutes. Then I’ll run that comparison study for you, though by that time it won’t matter much. They are where they are, Maeve, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can only move them one more time, and that’s to bring them back here.”

Maeve sighed, but she understood what he was saying, nodding agreement. Kelly stood up and put his arm around her. “Hey, I know this has been hard on you—on all of us. Imagine what they must be going through. We’re doing everything we possibly can for them, and we’ll get them both home just fine. You’ll see.”

Maeve smiled, wanting to be persuaded, but still driven by the need to know, to have a sense of some certainty about it all. “I think I need some of that coffee Jen made,” she said.

“I’ll get you a cup.”

She saw him searching about to locate the pot and decided his time would be better spent elsewhere. “Don’t bother. Get started on that tune-up job you were talking about. I’ll get the coffee myself. We haven’t much time.”

“Right,” said Kelly, and he diverted to the chamber console.

Maeve spotted the coffee and retrieved a mug from a supply cabinet on the far wall. “I wonder where they ended up after the first shift,” she mused.

“What? God only knows,” said Kelly. “I suppose we could do a full diagnostic on the shift—we will do that, but there won’t be time tonight.”

“You said the variance factor was off exponentially.”

“Nasty little error, that one.” Kelly was already tinkering with the particle chamber settings, pleased that the element readings were holding stable and he seemed to have good control. The particle density was building up nicely after the shift, and he glanced at the clock, relieved to see that he had ample time before his final retraction. It was 3:20 AM.”

“What was the range of that error. Any way to do a little quick multiplication and see if you can ballpark it?”

“Oh, I did that earlier.”

Maeve gave him a long look. “Well?”

Kelly was focused on the task in front of him, but he paused, eyes rolling a moment as he considered. “They went for quite a ride, I think. Somewhere in the early Tertiary, or late—”

“How long ago was that?” Maeve did not immediately recognize the term and was waiting for a simple number. “Are you talking in hundreds of years, or thousands?”

Kelly smiled. “More like millions. Maybe sixty-five million years or so—give or take a few hundred thousand.”

Maeve practically choked on her coffee. “Sixty-five million years? God, Kelly. I had no idea they were that far off the target!”

“Like I said, it was either the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous.”

“Then we’re talking dinosaurs here?” Maeve was amazed.

“A real Crichton-Spielberg moment,” said Kelly with a laugh. “I’ll bet they were scared shitless. Hopefully, they were only there for a brief time. I’m sure they probably figured out they were off target. I mean, the place was a seabed just a few thousand years before they showed up.”

“God, what if it still was a seabed.” She assumed the worst.

“Relax, they’d land at the surface. The references are almost foolproof.”

“How would you like to be plopped down in the middle of a primordial sea and forced to swim for the nearest shore in Arabic robes. Lord, Kelly, how can you take this so calmly! Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

“What, so you could worry about it? Look, I’m sorry. I was keying data fast and I made a mistake. I got them out of there as quickly as I could.”

“Well how do we even know they’re still alive?”

“We don’t know.” Kelly put it as plainly as he could. “We’ve just got to have a little faith, that’s all.”

She was going to say something, but took a sip of coffee instead, imposing an interval of calm on herself. She stared at the control consoles, fighting off the rising sense of frustration and helplessness that had been preying upon her since the call from her mother came in. Something had happened there, she thought. Just as Kelly pressed his looping command I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I could hear my mother’s voice resonating, echoing in my head over and over, and then it just vanished. She glanced at the phone, thinking about the moment. What was it the stranger had said? We’re in a deep void. Whatever we’ve done to the time lines will be determined in the next few minutes and, until then, the universe is holding its breath.

Kelly had returned to his chamber controls, working away as if nothing was wrong at all. He was supposed to be dead. She knew he must be feeling something about all of this, but he was able to set his emotions aside for the moment and focus on the task at hand. Every thing he did now, every calculation, every twist of a dial or flick of a switch, was subtly altering the shape of the world they had all been living in before. Kelly was a Free Variable. He was alive for some reason, and he was right, they had to have a little faith in the things that reason might bring.

She chided herself, watching his example, and realized she had been quite hard on him when it seemed like things were spinning out of control. He was doing the best he could, and it was amazing to her that he could manipulate the hardware and software as he did. Calculating new temporal coordinates in his head on the fly had been an incredible feat, but he pulled it off. The bank of machinery seemed so impersonal and unfeeling to her, like a lot of technology did. As if cars and televisions and computers were not enough, now there were going to be time machines to deal with.

Outcomes and Consequences—that was her charge. Even though she had been as excited as all the other senior team members at the prospect of success, the reality of it all was much more intimidating than she thought it would be. They could travel in time. It all worked! All of Paul’s time theory was a real phenomena now. The glossary of novel terms he dreamt up were all going to form the root of an entire new lexicon of thought and experience for humans. She thought back to the last time a project of this scope had been attempted, the Manhattan project during World War Two. They were going to unleash the power of the atom for the first time. What was it Oppenheimer had said? ‘Now I am become God, the destroyer of all things.’