John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

She looked suspiciously at the picture on the license, then at him. “This could be faked,” she said. “It doesn’t prove anything. I admit that this man certainly looks like you, but he’s older, with a graying beard and lines in his face that you don’t have,” she said, indicating the picture. “He looks like your older brother, and it says here that his name is Griffin, not Preston.”

He nodded. “You must agree that if I was simply going to produce a fake driver’s license, I would have used my present name and a better picture. I changed my name because I had to establish a new identity when I arrived here in the past,” he said. “You see, there’s already a previous copy of me here, and he’s using my old name. Dr. George Griffin is presently living in France and doing physics at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. I’m actually six years older, not younger, than the person in the picture, but I’ve had the advantage of some very good biotech repair work.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed, and then she grinned. “A face lift? Liposuction?” she asked with a conspiratorial whisper.

“Actually, something quite a bit more basic.” He laughed, then looked at the celebrating people nearby. Some of them were still watching him suspiciously in the aftermath of the slap. “Could we, urn, go someplace else to talk, Alice? This is a bit public for my taste and for what I have to say. Perhaps I could buy you a late dinner, if you know a nice restaurant that’s still open.”

Alice studied him for a time, tapping her foot as she considered the problem he presented. “Your story is the most amazing line of bull I’ve ever heard, Mr. Preston. It has to be an outrageous lie. But I have good instincts about people, and somehow I trust you — up to a point. If you were a Ted Bundy clone, your line would have been a lot more believable. And I must admit that you’ve elevated my curiosity to the highest level it’s been in a long time. Sure, I know a place that’s open all night. It’s shockingly expensive, too, and I mean to eat well.” She gestured for him to lead the way.

They had been gone for half an hour when an athletic dark-haired young man arrived, a notebook and pair of law books held loosely in his arm. He scanned the room, then approached a tall girl dispensing punch. “Jane, have you seen Alice?” he asked. “The library just closed, and I thought I’d come over and help you people celebrate.”

Jane smiled. “Sorry, Steve. I’m afraid you’re a bit too late,” she said. “Alice left some time ago with a rich Texas oilman. He’s one of our big contributors.”

“Oilman?” Steve said. “Who is he?”

“I believe,” said Jane, “that his name is George Preston. You may have read about him in BusinessWeek. He’s the founder and president of PetroGen. He’s supposed to be almost as rich as Bill Gates. Alice has already slapped him once this evening, but they seemed to be getting along fine when they left together.” She smiled after Steve as he stalked out of the room.

“I’m still not sure I understand,” Alice said as the tuxedo-clad waiter was removing the gold-rimmed plates. “The universe, this future you came from, was deliberately destroyed, you said.

Then how can you be here? Shouldn’t you have been destroyed along with it?”

“My friend Roger and I went through a wormhole as the future was being erased,” he said. “In a sense, we’re an extension of the erasing process.”

“But how…?”

“The world has been given a second chance,” said George. “Have you ever played a computer game where you can save the game status and read it back in if you don’t like what happens afterward? It’s rather like that, except with the real universe.” He paused, watching her reaction.

Alice was frowning with concentration. “But how can there be two copies of you here?” “Because my friend and I came through the wormhole that destroyed the future universe, and when we arrived, an earlier version of each of us was already here. It’s really not much different from having an identical twin. Roger says that, in order to conserve mass and energy, as we arrived the wormhole mouth lost an equal mass, allowing us to exist and the masses to balance. He’s derived some equations that explain the phenomenon, but I don’t understand them. Something about back reaction and annihilation of dark matter.”

Alice shook her head as if to clear her vision. “Why are you telling this to me, George?”

George looked deeply into her eyes again. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told, Alice,” he said quietly. “Perhaps that’s why I did it so clumsily. For the past six years I’ve thought about locating you and telling you what happened. I needed to tell you. In our world, the person you would have become was very brave, and I loved her more than I ever told her. She almost succeeded in stopping the Hive invasion, and she sacrificed her life in the effort. She was killed in a horrible way, and we were able to do what we did only because of her courage. I’m sure that she would have wanted you to know what happened.”

Alice nodded. “I suppose…” she said.

“And there is also another thing I need to tell you.” He flushed and looked down at the table. “I… I’m still in love with that Alice, with her. At least… I mean… I feel… Damn this language. It isn’t set up to talk about time travel. I… think I’m in love with you.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “But why now? Why here? You waited all this time. You’ve been here for six years. Why didn’t you…?”

He nodded. “In 1987 you were how old? Sixteen? Your mother had just died. You needed time to get over that. You needed space to grow, to become yourself. I couldn’t. Until I saw you tonight.”

She looked down. “You know, after Mom died I began having strange recurring dreams. There was an older woman, but she was also me. There was a man with a beard. You?” Again she stared across the table at him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that I want you to join us. There are only Roger and me now, and there’s so much to do.”

“But I’m only a junior in college,” she said. “I need to graduate. I can’t drop out of FSU. That’s crazy.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Your summer break is almost here. You can work with us this summer and decide later if you want to continue.”

She paused, looking thoughtful. “I have been writing letters and making phone calls trying to find a summer job,” she said. “But I had also wanted to continue helping with the campaign. You’re helping to get Bill Clinton elected? Is that part of the work you mentioned?”

“Yes, part of it,” said George. “But let me be quite clear about our support of him. Bill’s a very fine person, and I believe he’ll be a good President. But I must tell you that our support is a means to an end. We’re trying to keep the Superconducting Super Collider from being built. That’s the reason we came back here. If we can’t stop it, everyone on this planet will die in the year 2004.”

“I still don’t understand why you have to stop the SSC project,” said Alice. “Does its operation do something unexpected?”

“In a way,” said George. “The accelerator will work very well and will do just what it was designed for, but in the process it will make a signal that, um, will allow an enemy to find us and destroy our world. The only way to prevent the signal is by stopping the project.”

“But Bill has already gone on record as supporting the SSC project,” said Alice.

“He should support it,” said George. “Except for the unpleasant side effect I mentioned, of which Bill could have no knowledge, it’s an excellent science project that should be supported. But realistically, his support won’t be as deep-rooted as Bush’s, who is interested in anything in Texas and sees the SSC as a Republican project. Al Gore is interested in technology, but he also doesn’t have a strong interest in fundamental physics or any commitment to the SSC. And Bill’s new Science Advisor, whoever he will be, almost certainly won’t be as effective as Allan Bromley. Besides, our projections show that a lot of first-term Democrats should be swept in with Bill, and those people, with no baggage of commitments and no particular understanding of science, should almost all vote to kill the project.”