by Katie Khan
‘You can slow the speed of light.’
Thea nods appreciatively. ‘Basically, yes. You can slow an already decelerating light wave. It was slowed by the density of the prism, remember? We’re just slowing it even more. Then we harness it at that speed, and Bob’s your uncle, Thea’s your aunt.’ She smiles, humble. ‘And as we know, if you can travel faster than the speed of light …’
‘You can arrive somewhere before you left.’ Urvisha and Ayo finish the sentence by rote.
Isaac sits back. ‘Fuck.’
‘I know.’
‘And that got you kicked out of Oxford? Because right now it sounds like you should be winning the Nobel Prize.’
She swats him, getting up to make another pot of coffee. ‘See? I told you it would be easy to understand.’
‘Easy to understand for a room full of—’
‘Spice Girls?’ Urvisha asks.
‘DPhils,’ Isaac finishes. ‘I am but a lowly digital archivist.’
Thea snorts. ‘You’re not lowly.’
‘It’s incredible,’ Isaac says genuinely. ‘So that’s why you have so many prisms?’
‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘They all trap light inside in different ways, depending on their inner crystalline structure. I can experiment with speed, refraction, strength …’
‘Amazing.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, modestly. ‘When I read about the scientists at MIT theorizing a four-dimensional time crystal that exists in spacetime, I was blown away – it opened up so many new ideas about how to piggyback the light.’
‘Piggyback?’ Isaac looks suspicious.
‘It’s probably a discussion for another day,’ Thea says hurriedly. ‘But spacetime is the key. You’re familiar with space and time being paired, right? Isaac Newton. Stephen Hawking.’ At his nod, she continues. ‘Well, four-dimensional spacetime gives rise to the question: if it’s happening in space, could it be happening in time, too?’
Isaac puts down his mug. ‘What?’
Urvisha and Ayo catch each other’s eyes, both sitting back down.
‘This is hard for anyone to get their head around,’ Thea says. ‘Essentially, in four dimensions, if it’s happening in space, it’s also happening in time. So theoretically—’
‘But how does any of this relate to Rosy?’ Isaac says, interrupting her indecipherable flow. ‘She’s not a scientist.’
Thea doesn’t answer straight away, and the others avert their gaze in a way that could only ever seem suspicious: Urvisha looks straight down at her feet; Ayo slides her eyes to the kitchen window and out towards the barn.
‘It also doesn’t quite answer why you all looked so panicked when I arrived. Unless you were concerned about me bringing banned produce through customs, including that incredible pepperoni, and that I could therefore probably be deported.’ He looks remorsefully at the unopened pizza box, containing an uneaten pizza, then round the kitchen at the three women there with him.
‘Thea – where’s Rosy?’
Eight
Thea sighs, her heart breaking every time Isaac asks the question. ‘Rosy’s missing.’
Saying it aloud makes it more real.
‘Where is she?’
She wants to run from the room, pull one of the dustsheets over her head and hide until the situation resolves itself. But she can’t, because she’s responsible.
She knows that when he understands what she’s done, his awe at the science will once again make way for anger at her single-mindedness. This cosy reunion they’re enjoying is about to turn sour, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
Thea nods at Urvisha, sitting with her laptop. ‘Show him. Show Isaac the video.’
The footage shows the group setting up the barn. Thea, her head out of the frame, walks away from the camera and fiddles with the grey box of the laser. Urvisha is concentrating hard on her laptop, wearing a frown between her brows, and Rosy walks over to the glass house and steps inside. The glass house glows dramatically under the light of the photographic lamps, almost like they’re watching a play.
On camera, all three laugh when Rosy bellows ‘Go!’ Then the screen turns to white.
As the others did when they watched Rosy’s first leap at the Beecroft, Isaac leans in to the screen as the image whites out, trying to decipher what his eyes are seeing. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ he says, looping the video, watching it over and over. ‘Isn’t that what they say? Because fucking hell, you could have shown me this without all that explanation about Pink Floyd and pendulums and whatever the rest of it was. Even a fool could see she disappears.’
‘I thought you might like to understand what you’re seeing,’ Thea says, on the defensive.
‘That damned theory,’ Isaac says.
‘Yes. The principle.’
He replays the video again. ‘Are you sure it’s not the camera glitching?’
‘I’m sure,’ Thea says, gritting her teeth.
‘Because it might not be that Rosy’s disappearing, simply that the video buffered or moved on to a different frame for a second.’
‘It’s not,’ Ayo says.
‘Isaac, Rosy is gone. Don’t you think we’d have noticed if she had been sat in the barn all along? It’s not the video buffering.’ Thea is contemptuous.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I knew he wouldn’t,’ Urvisha says, frustrated. ‘We shouldn’t have told him. What a waste of time.’
‘Are you sure she wasn’t vaporized on the spot?’
‘That’s not helpful,’ Ayo reproves.
It’s past midday, and Rosy has been missing for twelve hours. The sun is overhead but far away, its warmth weak in late October.
‘If you looked at this without understanding at least that Rosy was carried away on the streak of white light … You wouldn’t have understood at all.’
‘Regardless, I believe you when you say that Rosy is missing. What’s the plan? What are we going to do?’ Isaac says.
‘There is no “we”,’ Thea says. ‘You’re not involved. We’re handling it.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Isaac says.
‘You’re here, but you’re judging me again.’
Ayo busies herself at the kitchen counter. Urvisha leans forward, drawn to the building anger.
‘If you’ve risked Rosy’s life because of that stupid theory—’
‘That stupid theory? The one you just said should win the Nobel Prize? The theory I’ve been working on for what feels like my whole life, Isaac? That theory?’
Isaac pushes his mug across the table. ‘Yeah, it sounds good on paper, Theodora, but in real life a person is missing. And not just any person: Rosy—’
‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it?’ Thea stands up and her chair falls over backwards, cracking loudly on the floor tiles. ‘Because it’s Rosalind de Glanville. When I rang to tell you I was doing the experiment myself, you weren’t bothered in the slightest about my fate.’
He pushes his hair aggressively out of his eyes. ‘Of course I was. And what I’m worried about right now is you don’t seem to have even contemplated that you might be wrong.’
She jolts backwards. ‘Of course I have. I’m absolutely terrified I am wrong.’
‘Then—’
Urvisha comes between them, breaking their locked view of each other. ‘Umm, guys? If I may – can you stop being so fucking stupid?’
They both look at her, amazed.
Urvisha slides the notebook over to Isaac, open on the page bearing the three-columned search for Rosalind. ‘This is the plan, Isaac. Either add a fourth column with your ideas for where to look, or get out of our way.’
Taken aback, Thea can’t believe Urvisha is actually taking her side. ‘Well, quite.’
‘You can shut up and all. I just couldn’t bear hearing your ridiculous lovers’ tiff while we’re all sitting here. We’ve got more important things to do.’ Urvisha nods at the notebook.
‘We’re not—’ T
hea starts.
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ Isaac says flatly.
Urvisha shrugs. ‘Whatever. Let’s focus, shall we?’
Isaac scans the columns outlining Oxford, Rosy’s family and the farm. He walks to the kitchen door, putting on his coat. ‘Can someone show me the barn?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘It’s probably the first place she’d return to, isn’t it? The place she left. And anyway,’ he says, stepping outside, ‘I’d like to see it.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Ayo says, stepping into her wellies and hurrying to catch up with him. ‘Thea, why don’t you think about making lunch?’
‘Umm, sure.’ Thea sits back down and watches as Ayo and Isaac pick their way across the overgrown vegetable garden, out towards the paddocks and barns.
Urvisha looks at Thea watching them from the window. ‘Thea,’ she says, ‘while they’re gone, tell me honestly – was there really never anything more between you and Isaac?’
‘What? No. Why?’
‘I want to know what group dynamic I’m getting myself into,’ she says.
Thea opens the fridge, full of bits and pieces from Ayo’s trip to the village, and ponders what she can combine to make a simple meal – cooking is Ayo’s strength, and maybe Rosy’s, but not Thea’s. She’s ashamed to say that at twenty-seven, she still lives like a student. ‘We made a mistake once,’ she says at last. She chooses beans on toast. ‘But we’re just friends.’
Urvisha arches an eyebrow. ‘A mistake.’
Thea shakes her head. ‘I’m not getting into it right now, Visha. Haven’t you ever mistaken a friendship for something more?’
‘Okay. “Just friends” it is.’
‘You asked for honesty; I’m giving it to you. He’s my friend – a good one – but I don’t feel more than that.’
‘Does he?’
Thea closes the kitchen cupboard and it accidentally slams, the noise loud in the quiet house. ‘I couldn’t say. You’d have to ask Isaac.’
∞
‘You make for an unusual team,’ Isaac says to Ayo while they cross the overgrown kitchen garden, as though he were chatting about the weather in that typical English way. ‘The three – four – of you.’
‘A crazy genius, a sarcastic hacker, an upper-class lady, and a Naija queen? Sounds like a good team to me,’ Ayo says haughtily as they cross the three stepping stones leading to the barn. ‘Diverse. Different. Strong.’
‘Until the lady went missing.’
Ayo is quiet. ‘Yes, there is that.’
‘What does “Naija” mean?’
‘Nigerian,’ Ayo explains. ‘Look it up sometime, the word has an interesting definition.’
‘I will. How did you get drawn into this?’
Ayo glances at him. ‘Thea and I were lab partners.’
They walk in silence for a minute, as Isaac thinks through everything he’s heard since he arrived at the farm. ‘You can’t possibly believe all this,’ he says, shifting gear without even looking at her.
‘Believe what: time travel?’
‘It’s completely and utterly nuts.’
She sighs. ‘In the late 1980s two of the most prominent physicists of the time, Kip Thorne and Carl Sagan, concluded there is nothing in the laws of physics – specifically, Einstein’s theory of general relativity – that would make time travel impossible.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he says. He’d forgotten she was also a scientist.
‘You were utterly on board with the physics when Thea explained the theories involved, Isaac.’
‘Yes, but I don’t know better.’ He stops to tie his shoelace. ‘You do.’
‘You heard her – she’s a genius, combining those principles—’
‘Ayo.’ Isaac straightens. ‘You didn’t take part in the experiments in Oxford – there must be something that made you uncomfortable, something that didn’t chime well with you.’
She’s silent.
‘You should be spending every waking moment looking into the experiments they’ve already run,’ he says as they walk past the dovecote, towards the barn. ‘You are the only person she will trust to hear sense on the science.’
‘Why would I want to—?’
‘Because people are getting hurt. Has it occurred to you that Rosy could be dead, incinerated by an unregulated laser?’
Ayo’s gait and quickened pace give away her anger, though whether it’s directed at him or herself, Isaac can’t tell. ‘No. That’s not possible.’
‘Is it any less probable than Thea managing to successfully establish time travel here in a barn in Dunsop Bridge? Look around –’ Isaac waves at the yellow and red leaves dropping to the floor, the wood edging the farm’s borders – ‘we’re pretty far away from Oxford University’s Department of Physics.’
‘I checked it,’ she says in a low voice, though she doesn’t slow. ‘The laser was sound.’ They get to the barn and she wheels the door round. ‘Anyway, being far away from Oxford was sort of Thea’s point.’
‘All I’m saying is it wouldn’t hurt to have someone cynical on the team, looking at the facts,’ Isaac advises.
‘That role’s taken.’ She flicks on the lights inside the barn. ‘By you.’
‘Me? You heard Thea – I’m not on the team.’ He gazes around at the setup.
‘You should be.’ She beckons Isaac in, showing him first the laser, then the glass house. ‘I’m sure you’ve got skills we could utilize.’ She looks at him. ‘What do you do, anyway?’
‘I deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services so there are records of them in the future,’ he parrots, chin raised high.
Ayo shrugs.
‘I digitize old documents for the Guggenheim. It’s all research and databases. So this is where Rosy disappeared?’ He tries the glass door, peering inside. ‘I have no idea how this booth thing would work.’
‘You’d have to ask Thea,’ Ayo says, shrugging again. ‘She calls it the glass house.’
He steps inside, crouching down to fit. ‘What’s this?’ She leans in quickly and looks over his shoulder as he pushes against the rear glass wall. It opens like a door into a much smaller antechamber, only a few inches deep. ‘What’s that for?’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s never been mentioned.’ Ayo steps into the small booth too, packing them both in tightly – it’s comfortable enough for one, constricted with two.
‘Thea’s a genius,’ Isaac says with genuine admiration in his voice, looking at the etched lines of the prismatic glass. ‘But that doesn’t mean I truly believe she has successfully established time travel.’
Ayo climbs out and walks across to the laser. ‘The thing is, if she can’t prove she has established time travel, then she’s up shit creek – please excuse my language. Out of Oxford with few prospects in the world of physics, and worst of all …’
‘Rosy is missing.’
‘Yes.’ Ayo examines the laser. ‘It’s quite the conundrum.’
Isaac hops up onto the workbench, taking a seat. ‘That’s an interesting choice of word, conundrum.’
Ayo is earnest. ‘With Rosy missing, it actually makes it more probable that we – they – successfully established time travel.’
Isaac sucks in the air as he understands. ‘Because if Rosy were here, you’d have failed.’
‘Precisely.’ Ayo sits next to him. ‘If we can prove Rosy’s gone because she’s stuck somewhere back in time, well …’
He’s dumbstruck. ‘What do you mean, if Rosy is stuck somewhere in time?’
They hear a cough and Urvisha stands in the doorway, clearing her throat, illuminated by the daylight outside. ‘Any luck?’ she says.
‘With what?’
‘Finding Rosy.’ Urvisha is impatient. ‘Because if not, Ayo should probably head back to Oxford and start the hunt.’
Focusing on the trees behind Urvisha, Isaac jumps off the workbench, making it shake. ‘Let’s get Thea,’ he says, stepping out of the barn, ‘
and start searching the woods. We can talk while we look.’
Urvisha looks at him with unveiled cynicism. ‘Oh?’
‘I might have an idea.’
Leaves crunch underfoot as they wind their way through the yellowing trees. What had looked like a huge forest when they arrived and had loomed, menacing, in the dark, turns out to be a small wood bordering the farm. Beyond that, an open landscape of patchwork green fields with brown fallow is crisscrossed by lanes and roads leading in either direction: towards the village, or towards the hills of Lancashire.
‘Pretty,’ Ayo concedes as they wander through the trees.
‘Why are we searching out here?’ Thea asks gently. The cold air is taking its toll on her fragile condition, dosed up to the eyeballs on flu medication.
‘You ran a displacement experiment next to a wood,’ Isaac says. ‘We should definitely search the wood.’
‘Displacement,’ Thea repeats. ‘Interesting.’
‘You said Rosy turned up in the atrium right next to where you were? Hence, displacement.’
‘Keep looking,’ Urvisha says, marching along, her sleek ponytail swinging. ‘Rosy could have been displaced anywhere round here.’
Isaac treads carefully around bogs and puddles, watching the group; if they were out walking on a happier day, they might pick up handfuls of crunchy orange leaves and throw them at each other, laughing. But the mood today is not carefree. They walk cautiously, looking left and right, talking in hushed tones – though there’s no one around to overhear.
The trees give way to the road, and the group begin to walk towards the village. Isaac runs his hand along the top of the low stone wall alongside the road, and his palm catches on the shingle packed into the wall hundreds of years before. He bides his time, waiting for the right moment. ‘I think I know a way I can help with the search,’ he says finally.
Thea stops to listen, but Urvisha urges her on. ‘Come on – walk and talk.’
‘How?’ Thea says to Isaac, moving next to him.
‘We follow the plan you’ve already outlined.’ He gestures at each of the group. ‘Thea stays at the farm in case Rosy turns up there. Ayo heads back to Oxford.’ A jagged stone tears into his thumb and he retracts his hand from the wall, examining it. ‘Urvisha makes contact with Rosy’s family in person, to scope them out.’
