Zig Zag

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  "Well, we videotaped the image of the broken glass and sent it to a particle accelerator," Marini went on. "As you know, a video is nothing but a beam of electrons. We accelerated those electrons to obtain a level of energy that was stable to within a few decimals and we made them collide with a stream of positrons. The resulting particles should have contained the open strings from a period equivalent to two hours before the breaking of the glass. We then reconverted those particles into a new beam of electrons, made them collide against a television screen, used a special software program to profile the image. And when we turned on the screen, what did we see?"

  "A broken glass on the floor," said Blanes, and laughter erupted once more.

  "Well, yes, that's what happened the first hundred or so times we tried it," Marini admitted. "But that night in 2001 was different. We managed to receive an image of the unbroken glass on the table. And we had never filmed that image. Do you see what I'm getting at? It came from the past. Specifically, from two hours before we began filming ... Guys, that night we went out and got blind drunk. I remember being in a pub in Zurich with David, three sheets to the wind, when an equally drunk Swiss guy says to me, 'Why so happy, friend?' 'Because the glass is unbroken,' I said. And the guy says, 'Lucky you; I've already broken three tonight.'

  "No joke, that really happened," Blanes insisted as laughter rang out in the small room. Even Valente, who was always so superior when people made run-of-the-mill jokes (Elisa thought) seemed to think it was hilarious.

  "When we showed that image to the people with the big bucks," Marini continued, "jeez! Offers for financial backing started to flood in ... Eagle Group took the reins and started construction on this scientific station here on New Nelson. And, well, Colin will tell you the rest." Colin Craig got up, and Marini took his seat. People were still giggling and making comments. Nadja's face was flushed from laughing so hard, and Mrs. Ross (who had unexpectedly gone into hysterics with the tale of the man in the Zurich pub) was still wiping tears from her cheeks. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed.

  Still, Elisa picked up on something.

  Something different, something incongruent.

  She thought she could see it in the glances that Marini, Blanes, and Craig exchanged. It was as if they were thinking, "May as well let them have fun for a little while."

  Maybe the rest won't be so enjoyable, she surmised.

  "SO I was in charge of coordinating all the practicalities for the project," Craig said. "In 2004, a dozen satellites were secretly launched in geosynchronous orbit; that is, they were programmed to rotate at a rate that matched the speed of the earth's rotation on its axis. They were equipped with cameras that could produce multispectral imagery at up to a half-meter resolution and focus on a twelve-kilometer area. They could record telemetric sequences of anyplace on the planet, using the coordinates received from New Nelson. And those images are retransmitted to our station in real time (which is why the project is called Zig Zag; the signal boomerangs back and forth from the earth to the satellite and back to the earth again), where they're processed by a twenty-two-bit computer, isolating the geographic zone in question. Now, that's not quite precise enough to allow us to count every hair on Sergio's head..."

  "But it is on David's, since he's got so few left," Marini interjected.

  "Precisely. In a word, we can see whatever we want, whenever we want, just like military spy satellites. Let me give you an example." Craig strode over to the computer console, gently pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose as he did. Elisa thought he possessed such a natural elegance that he could attend a reception at Buckingham Palace in the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing right now without attracting attention. He quickly typed something and the screen came to life, showing a rough sketch of the Egyptian pyramids. In one corner stood two mummies. Their faces had been covered with cutouts from photos of Marini and Blanes. People giggled. "Let's suppose we ask the satellites to capture a sequence of the Nile delta. They do it, send it to us, and a computer processes it and obtains a series of maps of the pyramids. After streaming the beam of electrons through our synchrotron, we recover the recently formed particles, and then another computer reconstructs them and captures the new image. If we've used the right amount of energy, then we'll be able to see the same place, the Egyptian pyramids, but, say, three thousand years earlier... With a little luck, for a few seconds, we'd be able to see a pyramid being built, or a pharaoh's burial ceremony."

  "Amazing," Elisa heard Nadja murmur, two seats to her left.

  Marini stood abruptly.

  "Hey, Colin, I think it's time to convince our audience that this isn't just a pipe dream."

  Craig typed something into the console. A blurry but identifiable image—pale rose, almost sepia in color, like an old photo—appeared on the screen.

  A sudden hush overcame the room.

  Elisa felt a strange, ambiguous emotion; she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Valente, sitting next to her, leaned forward with his mouth open, like a little kid unwrapping the present he's been dreaming of, the one he thought no one was going to give him.

  The photograph wasn't particularly interesting. It was just a close-up of a glass, half full of water, sitting on a table.

  "The amazing thing about this image," said Marini calmly, "is that it was never photographed. We extracted it from a twenty-second clip of the same table, but what we filmed showed the glass broken on the floor two hours later. So what you have before you is the first real image of the past ever seen by the human eye."

  Elisa's eyes began to moisten with emotion.

  That was what science was, she thought. True science, the kind that changes the course of history forever, was precisely that: seeing an apple fall from a tree, and weeping.

  Or an unbroken glass sitting on a table.

  IT was Reinhard Silberg's turn. When he planted himself in front of the screen, he gave the impression (the correct impression, Elisa thought) of being enormous. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers with a leather belt, and was the only one there wearing a tie, though it was loosened. Everything about him was imposing, and maybe that's why he sometimes seemed to be trying to lighten up, giving a smile that looked almost childlike on his clean-shaven, pudgy, bespectacled face.

  Right then, however, he wasn't smiling. Elisa guessed the reason. Maybe he's the one who's here to give us the catch. The German scientific historian's first words made clear that she was right.

  "I'm Reinhard Silberg, and I specialize in the philosophy of science. I was recruited for Project Zig Zag as a consultant for all matters that are not physics related, but are still of great importance." He paused and moved a foot, as if he were tracing something on the metal floor with a toe. "As you know, this project is top secret. No one knows we're here. Not our colleagues, not our friends, not our families, not even most of the managers at Eagle Group. Naturally, we can't fool the scientific community, but with the articles we've published and conferences we've put on, we've dangled a few carrots. They know that the sequoia theory has potential, if you'll pardon the expression, but not how potent it really is. This project is one of a kind, at least up until now. We've been selected after a rigorous study of our lives, hobbies, friends, and concerns. We'll be working on something that no one has any prior experience with. We're pioneers, and we need special security measures ... for several reasons."

  He paused again and looked down at his foot, which was still jiggling.

  "To begin with, don't even think that we'll be watching movies on this screen. When we go to the movies, we see Caesar's murder, for instance, as if it had been filmed by a home-movie buff straight from the time of the Roman Empire. But the images we obtain from open time strings are not movies, not even "true" or "real" films of the past: they are the past. We can watch them on a screen like movies, record them onto DVD like movies, but you must always remember that these are open time strings that we've extracted information from. When we see Caesar's mur
der it will be Caesar's murder, just exactly as it happened and was recorded in the actual particles of light reflected at the time, which is to say in the real past. This gives rise to certain consequences. We don't know, for example, what would happen with events or people who form part of our culture, part of our ideals. Some secret studies have been carried out, but they've been pretty inconclusive. For example, what would happen if we saw Jesus Christ, or Muhammad, or Buddha? Just seeing them and knowing, for certain, that it was actually them ... Not to mention what could happen if we discovered aspects of their lives that went against the teachings of the churches and creeds that claim to follow these founders. What these churches have been making millions of people—including several of us, most likely— believe for centuries. Well, clearly, that's more than enough reason for Project Zig Zag to be considered classified. But... there's also another reason." He paused and blinked.

  "I'd like to explain it to you using another image. It's the only one we've been able to obtain, with the exception of the Unbroken Glass. Most of you don't even know it exists. Jacqueline, you're going to be quite surprised ... Colin, would you?"

  "Sure."

  Craig typed something else. This time the screening room lights went dim. In the darkness, someone (Elisa thought it was Marini's voice) said, "Fast forward through the ads, Reinhard." But this time, no one laughed. Silberg began speaking, and his silhouette was visible in the dim light emanating from the computer console.

  "This was obtained using the system that Colin just explained to you about before. A satellite sent the images, we calculated the energy needed to open the time strings and processed it..."

  The screen lit up. Washed out, reddish forms appeared.

  "The faded color is due to the fact that the 'past' end of the string is located, in spatial terms, almost a million light-years away from us, and it keeps getting farther," Silberg explained, "so it fades to this reddish hue in the same way other celestial bodies do. But this, in fact, comes from Earth..."

  It looked like a landscape. The camera was flying over a mountain range that seemed approachable, almost diminutive, and had circular valleys and spherical rocks between the mountains. The whole of it looked like a great baker had frosted it with an enormous load of whipped cream.

  "My God," said Jacqueline in a shaky voice.

  Leaning forward, Elisa uncrossed her legs. She felt weird. She couldn't put her finger on what she felt, but she knew it was related to the image she was seeing. It was like a shift toward uneasiness.

  Something vaguely threatening.

  But where was the threat coming from?

  "Immense glaciers...," Clissot murmured, absorbed, "glaciers with U-shaped erosion... Look at those cirques and nunataks. Look, Nadja, what does it remind you of? You're the real paleogeologist..."

  "Those mounds are drumlins," Nadja replied in a tiny voice. "But they're enormous. And those moraines on either side of them... It looks like a ton of sediment has been washed in from really far away."

  What's going on? Elisa gave a nervous giggle. It was absurd, but she couldn't help it. There was something very disturbing about those red-tinged snowy summits. She felt faint and confused.

  She saw Nadja tremble and wondered if it was just excitement at these findings, or if something similar was happening to her. Valente looked like he'd been affected, too. She heard someone gasp.

  This is ridiculous.

  But it wasn't. There was something very strange about that landscape.

  "There seem to be signs of water in the crevasses," Nadja whispered, disconcerted.

  "My God, that glacier is melting!" Clissot cried.

  Silberg's voice, anxious and barely audible yet steady and clear, came from beside the screen.

  "Those are the British Isles, eight hundred thousand years ago."

  "The Gunz glaciation...," she whispered. "Exactly. Pleistocene. The Quaternary period."

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Clissot whispered. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" Nausea. It's nauseating. But what?

  When the lights went on, Elisa realized she'd been hugging herself tightly, as if she'd been naked in public and was trying to hide.

  "THIS is the second reason that Project Zig Zag has to be kept a secret. We don't know what creates it. We're calling it 'Impact.'" Silberg wrote the word on a small whiteboard on the wall, beside the screen. "We always write it like that, 'Impact,' with a capital I. Everyone experiences it, to a greater or lesser degree. It's an unusual reaction to images from the past. I could venture a theory to explain it. Maybe Jung was right; we have a collective unconscious that's full of archetypes, sort of like the species' genetic memory, and the images from the open time strings somehow disrupt it. Keep in mind that this particular part of our unconscious has been inviolate for generations, and, suddenly, for the first time, the door opens, light filters into the darkness..."

  "Why didn't we feel anything with the Unbroken Glass?" Valente asked.

  "Well, in fact we did," said Silberg, and Elisa realized that this could explain part of her excitement when she saw that image. "Just with less intensity. It seems that the strongest Impacts come from the remote past. The symptoms we've detected so far include anxiety, depersonalization, a disconnect from reality—that is, the feeling that we are unreal, or that the world around us is—insomnia, and, occasionally, hallucination. That's why I started off by telling you that this isn't like the movies. Opening time strings is a much more complex phenomenon."

  Elisa saw Nadja rubbing her eyes. Clissot had sat down with her and was whispering into her ear.

  "We still don't know if there are other, more important side effects or not," Silberg continued. "Grave Impacts, I mean. And that means we have to set out a series of security measures that we must all obey. The most important one is this: when we see an image for the first time, we'll always do it as a group, just like today. That way we can observe each other's reactions. In addition, our behavior outside this room, even in private, will be subject to certain controls. That's why there are peepholes on our doors and no locks. It's not about spying on each other. It's so that no one is isolated. If the Impact affects any of us especially strong, the others need to know as soon as possible. Still, there's a margin of unknown risk. We're confronting something totally new, and we can't predict all of the effects it will have on us."

  At first, people muttered, but shortly thereafter the general atmosphere changed. The project that lay before them made everyone undeniably excited. Elisa's eyes were welling up and she had a knot in her throat. I've seen a landscape from the Quaternary period. Good God. And I'm still here, this isn't a dream... I've seen Earth, the planet I inhabit, almost a million years ago. Sergio Marini's voice rang out good-naturedly above the rest.

  "Well, now we've heard the cons. What are we waiting for? Let's get to work!"

  Elisa stood up, inspired. But just then Valente whispered, "They're hiding things, sweetheart. I'm absolutely sure they're not telling us the whole truth."

  15

  THE night of July 25, Elisa saw the shadow for the first time.

  Later on, she realized that it was another sign: Mr. White Eyes had arrived.

  Here I am, Elisa. It's me. I'll never leave your side.

  LIGHT and silent, like a soul on one of those "astral voyages" that her mother believed in, it floated for a second in the peephole at her door and then disappeared. She smiled. Someone else who can't sleep.

  It didn't seem strange. The room was comfortable, but you couldn't really think of it as a home. It was hot within those metal walls because, as Valente had said, they turned off the air-conditioning at night, and her window was one of those tilting ones that didn't open all the way. Wearing only her panties, Elisa lay sweating on the bed, in a mix of light and darkness: to her right, the glare of the spotlights on the fences; to her left the faint rectangle cast by the peephole.

  She'd seen it head toward the door that separated the two wings of the barracks, so it was pro
bably one of her colleagues, Nadja, Ric, or Rosalyn. Everyone else slept in the other wing.

  Where was it going? She strained to hear. The doors weren't creaky, but they were metal, after all, so she assumed that in a few seconds she'd hear some sort of click.

  But she didn't.

  The silence intrigued her. It made her think it was more than sheer consideration for those who were sleeping. It was as if the insomniac in question were being cautious.

  She got out of bed and walked over to the peephole. She could see the faint emergency lights in the hallway, which looked empty, although she was sure she'd seen a silhouette go past.

  She put on her T-shirt and walked out. The door that connected the barracks' two wings was closed. Someone, though, must have opened it just a second ago. It wasn't a ghost.

  She hesitated for a second. Should she try to find out if someone was missing from his or her bed? No, but she knew she wouldn't be able to rest easy if she did nothing. She opened the door that led to the next wing. Before her stretched the darkened hallway, feebly lit by tiny bulbs. To the right, the bedroom doors. To the left, the way to the next barracks.

  She felt uneasy.

  She wanted to laugh. They ordered us to spy on each other, and that's exactly what I'm doing. In her T-shirt and undies, barefoot in the hallway, it was like...

  A noise.

  This time she was sure, though it was far off. It could have been coming from the next barracks over.

  She walked toward the end of the hallway that led to the second barracks. Her anxiety refused to leave, like the last guest at a party, but she hid it well. She was a fairly calm person. Being an only child had taught her how to walk alone on dark, quiet nights.

  But she was about to lose that ability entirely.

  She reached the hallway and peeked in.

  About six feet away, a strange creature that seemed to be made of shadows held its arms out wide, waving them around, and staring at her with an intense, all-consuming look. And the worst thing (later she would realize that this was another warning) was seeing that it had no face, or at least she couldn't make out any of its features in the darkness.