by Greg Enslen
Don turned and went back into the computer lab—this room had been built much like a large Faraday cage. Everything inside appeared to be intact. Better still, the thick metallic walls would make this room the safest in the warehouse.
He pulled off his external radiation sticker and held it up.
It was black. That meant that an unprotected person would have received a lethal dose. He stripped off the metal suit and reached inside his shirt to check the sticker on his bare skin—it was blue. Green was fine, blue was exposure that could cause harm, red was full exposure, purple was extreme exposure, and black was death. Apparently, the ridiculous metal suit had helped.
Now, he had roughly ten to twelve hours of work. He looked at his watch—it was nearly 11 a.m., so he had until between 10 p.m. and midnight tonight to finish. The boat trip had taken five hours longer than he’d expected, increasing his exposure. The eleven-hour window had just been a guess—now, he wasn’t sure how long it would be before the symptoms started in.
Don needed to start with the computer equipment in the Faraday cage. After that, he needed to get the machine parts from the boat, but all he wanted to do was rest. He wanted nothing more than to curl up on the couch in the computer lab and sleep. He was so tired—
Don shook his head and stood. He walked to the end of the computer lab and found the small refrigerator and pulled it open. The contents were no longer cold, but there were several cans of Red Bull inside. He wasn’t sure if they were safe or not, but he shook his head and pulled one out and downed it, the sickly-sweet drink helping push off the edges of exhaustion.
He just needed to keep moving and get the job done.
3.38
Supplies and Parts
Six hours later, Dr. Donald Ellis lugged the last box of parts inside—he’d put a plank of wood from the shore out onto the boat, so unloading had gone faster than he’d planned.
He had to thank the mysterious computer techie who’d stocked that mini-fridge—Ellis had brought along a few energy drinks in his supplies, but finding that small fridge had helped. He planned to drink only from the less-contaminated supplies he’d brought with him from now on, but it was nice to know those drinks were there as a backup. Don wasn’t sure who had put them there, but he said a quiet thank you and moved on.
Don set the box down and locked the doors behind him. He’d only been outside four times since his arrival this morning, but each time he’d gone outside he’d applied a new radiation badge, and they had all turned black. Spreading out his exposure would hopefully give his body and the potassium iodine a chance to deal with the radiation he was absorbing. He also avoided stepping in the snowy blanket of fallout that covered the ground outside. From the Geiger readings, it was obvious that being outside for more than just a few minutes would have a permanent affect, so he’d paced himself.
First, he’d gotten the sensitive electronics from the Faraday cage and reinserted them into the machine—if those electronics were damaged or destroyed, the machine would be inoperable, and there would be no use in lugging in the remaining parts. But the Faraday cage had worked well, absorbing the environmental radiation, and the electronics appeared to be in good working order. He ran preliminary diagnostics on the machine, testing the pieces of equipment, which the other Ellis had locked away in the final minutes of his life, and verifying that the computers systems were operational. Don had also powered up the mini-reactor to purify and purge the air inside the warehouse.
Next, he’d dressed in the metal suit and retrieved a load of items from the boat. Back inside, he’d taken off some pieces of the more bulky metal suit, so that he could work. He’d emptied the parts out onto the worktable and put them into the machine, one component at a time. After the first two trips, he’d brought in and installed most of the missing machine parts.
On his third trip outside, Ellis had found the other him.
The younger version of him was sitting in one of the cars outside—Don had determined that the blackening on the cars and grounds and trees must have come from an initial explosion of high thermal intensity, flash cooking everything within a mile or two of the reactor. The other Dr. Ellis had been sitting inside his car, along with Terry and Cassie. Their skin had been mottled by the radiation exposure, but he recognized them, nonetheless. He didn’t know what to do or how to feel anything other than incredible guilt. There wasn’t anything to do, so he left them there and went inside.
The third trip to the boat had been for the last box of machine components. Once he was back inside, he’d removed the NBC suit and the metal helmet and leather gloves—he couldn’t work in them. As he’d spread the components from the box out on the table and begun installing them, he’d noticed the first red lesions on the back of his hands. They looked like blisters.
Don had known they were coming, but he’d hoped it would be longer before the slow, low-level “burn” of the environmental radiation began to affect him. He needed to hurry. The patch he wore on his skin, under all the layers, showed his true dosage, and it had gone from blue to red in the last hour. Next would be purple, then black.
He brushed at his forehead with the back of one hand, and he realized how much he’d been sweating. Was that good? Was it helping purge the toxins or getting rid of good water, which he would soon replace with contaminated water? The back of his hands felt scratchy and mottled. He ignored it and snapped the missing components into place, hurrying to tighten the screws. Finally, he was done.
He caught a reflection of his face in a shiny portion of the machine and saw that his face was reddening and beginning to break out in the same blister-like pustules that now covered his arms and legs.
Don had started a systems diagnostic before he pulled the heavy metal helmet on one more time and went outside. The fourth and last trip to the boat was for the two small boxes of supplies he’d brought—water, some protein bars, and the rest of his potassium iodide.
All of the food he’d brought with him had been irradiated, but the radiation levels were far lower than in food and drinks from the fallout zone. Ellis tried not to think about it and hoped his body could handle it. Just to be safe, he ate as little as possible—a couple of protein bars, another Red Bull, and some bottled water, along with a triple dose of potassium iodine. He thought about setting up some kind of water purification system to take water from the river—it was coming from upstream and therefore less contaminated—but he decided against it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be here that long.
He was packing up his foodstuffs and the water and waiting on the diagnostic to finish. It seemed to be taking longer than it should have. He glanced at his watch—it read 6:00 p.m. He was at seven hours of exposure, since he had arrived, not counting what exposure he had received on the river. But the machine was done. Once the diagnostics came back clean, he’d be able to leave.
Don went into the office and began gathering his bags. Most of his books and things were still packed up in the boxes they’d used for transport, and all the furniture was pushed over into one corner, awaiting his arrival to set up the new office.
Everything he needed was in the large safe. As he’d done last time, he’d bring a large leather bag full of equipment, the printed and CD versions of the plans for the machine, and everything else he would need to start over. He wondered if he even needed the plans anymore—he probably could recite them from memory.
He wished, beyond anything, that he could use the machine to transport itself back in time. Terry had had a vision for the ultimate device—shrinking the existing machine down to the point where it was self-contained. It would be a true time machine, instead of a time tunneler or time projector, because it moved itself through time along with the operator.
Ellis shook his head—the prospect of starting over from scratch was so depressing—he wasn’t sure if he could do it or not. He dreaded the idea of raising funds again, recruiting others, and rebuilding the machine over again in a new timeline. He shook his head as he stuffed
wads of cash and a large bag of diamonds into the leather bag. Asking other people to help had been a bad idea—he’d proven that, over and over again. Informing the governments had caused nothing but problems.
Next time, he’d do it himself. He’d arrange for Mohammed Atta and his clowns to be caught, or he’d take care of them himself. He’d figure something out.
Into the bags, he stuffed everything he would need—identification, money, and jewels to be sold to raise startup funds, the machine plans, the last iPad from his original timeline, contact lenses, his wallet with the note from Sarah, the gun from Tina/Trish, and a few other items he had collected in the different timelines.
The gun from the future Tina had been an anomaly—he’d spent months working on it with a group of dedicated techs back in 1996, trying to figure out how it worked. They’d managed to partially disassemble it before they realized that it didn’t use bullets—this gun’s ammunition was liquid metal. Specifically, mercury, but any liquid would work. There was an intake valve in the base of the handle, and when the gun was placed in a vat of any liquid, the gun drew the liquid up into a chamber. When the gun was fired, small droplets of the liquid were accelerated to incredible speeds and expelled from the barrel—how the liquid was accelerated was still a mystery, as was the weapon’s power source.
It was, essentially, a super-powered water gun—in some of the experiments, droplets of ordinary water had penetrated an inch of steel when fired from the odd blue pistol. Any liquid worked, but mercury seemed to have the most stopping power, so that’s what he had loaded it with. He carried an ample supply of extra mercury as well.
Putting the gun in his bag, it was hard to believe he was leaving it all behind again, starting over. He felt like he was abandoning these people, but he needed to move on. He had to set things right, no matter how many tries it took.
He was starting to think that it might not be worth it—he could never save his Sarah and Tina. They were gone, lost somewhere in time. These other Sarahs and Tinas that he had met, in this timeline and the last, they weren’t the real ones. Copies, doppelgangers, ghosts. He’d spent time with them, befriended them in awkward ways that made their relationships feel strained and artificial. Even when he’d sat those other Tinas on his lap and told them fantastic stories, it didn’t feel real or right. And the quiet dinners with the Ellis family had always felt strained, especially when he would ask the Sarah at the table to tell him the stories he missed so dearly of her childhood in Texas. The stories were the same, and the voice was the same, but, somehow, it was all too forced and unreal. Instead of having dinner with his family, it felt like he’d been watching a recording of that dinner. There was a distance between them, somehow trivial and vast at the same time.
As he packed up the leather bag and carried it back into the warehouse, Don couldn’t help wondering if he would ever see his wife and child again.
He set his bag down next to the control PC. The diagnostics routine was finally over—and it showed two components missing, both in the primary firing chamber.
“Shit.”
Don turned and began searching for them.
3.39
Flyover
The Harrier flew low over the location again.
“Nope, I’m sure. There are fresh tracks in the ash, and a few lights are on. Like I said, I saw someone down there, in an NBC suit,” the pilot said into his headset. “It’s a big warehouse, next to the Hudson. Maybe a quarter-mile upriver from the power plant.”
The pilot, a young man from the Texas panhandle, had flown more sorties in the past week than in the rest of his career, criss-crossing the Exclusion Zone, looking for anything unusual. He’d flown over this area, near the power plant on many occasions, and he was pretty sure he would have noticed those lights on the exterior of the large warehouse. None of the other buildings in the area had power—few inside the Exclusion Zone did, after this long, and none of the others had regained power—he was sure.
“Are you getting any readings? Is it survivors?”
He shook his head—there weren’t any survivors. Didn’t base understand that yet? They were up here flying thirty missions a day, looking for survivors, but they’d found none—no people, no animals, nothing. Everything was dead—anyone or anything alive in the Exclusion Zone had come in after the attacks—and died immediately.
The buildings and cities and forests and fields were already lost, and nothing could heal the region except for time. It would be at least a hundred years before the area could be safely inhabited, and even then, the new residents would have to be inoculated against the higher radiation levels.
“No, I don’t think it’s a sign of survivors. The warehouse looks like it’s on emergency power or something.”
“It’s probably running on generators,” the base controller said. “They just had a shit-ton of gasoline stored up. It’ll run out soon, and then—”
“Wait a sec,” the pilot interrupted. As his plane flew through the sky, it trailed a towed radioactive array, or TRA, to measure radiation levels in the Exclusion Zone. But he was getting a strange reading.
After a few long seconds, he tapped the communications button on his flight stick again.
“OK, this makes no sense. I’m getting high readings on the towed array—it’s picking up active generation of radioactive energy. It doesn’t appear to be from the background environment or the fallout.”
Base was quiet for a minute.
“OK, gotcha,” she finally said. “We’ve tagged the location for a helicopter flyover. Thanks, pilot—continue your grid.”
The pilot acknowledged base and glanced one more time down at the warehouse, perched on the edge of the river. All the evidence pointed to a self-contained building with its own independent, nuclear power source. The array of Geiger counters and other detectors that he was dragging through the air an eighth of a mile behind his plane had sampled the air and could find no other explanation.
3.40
Diagnostics Complete
Halfway through the installation of the missing two components, Don’s nose began to bleed.
He felt a tickle and set his tools down to remove the helmet and outer cover, and by the time his head was free, the blood was flowing freely. He found a rag and stuffed it up his nose, and then the other nostril began to leak as well.
“Crap.”
He turned and inserted the last two pieces, snapping a cover in place over them. Something was still nagging at him, something he needed to do…
Don looked up at the lights.
Slowly, it dawned on him. With the reactor operating, any lights on the exterior of the warehouse would be glowing. Would anyone notice? He knew that the military was operating flights over the Zone, but he didn’t think it would matter.
He put the helmet under his arm and walked back over to the controls, restarting the diagnostics. His nose had stopped bleeding, so he pulled the rags free and looked around, trying to think what else he needed to do. His leather bag was ready to go, sitting on the floor in the painted circle. As soon as the machine diagnostic came back clean, he was gone.
The reactor was running, and he had plenty of power. The building was doing fine—low-level lights, electric fences, motion detectors, cameras. If anyone came around, he would know.
3.41
Helicopter
At the Tarrytown Air Station, about twenty miles south of the ruins of the Indian River Nuclear Power Plant, a helicopter lifted off from a small field, jammed with much more equipment than it was designed to support.
Inside, the two pilots and four soldiers were covered head-to-toe in NBC suits, black rubber against the black of the interior of the helicopter. Both side doors of the Huey were open, and the soldiers were tying off, attaching the rappel lines they would use to drop to the ground to the overhead base plates.
In the west, the sun was dropping quickly toward the distant horizon.
Sorties of this type were dangerous enough wi
thout exposure to fallout and environmental radiation. The rubber NBC suits were necessary, but they made it much more difficult to deploy and “fast rope” down to the ground, which was likewise contaminated. They were losing daylight, so the pilot pushed his throttle to the maximum and turned north. Night missions were rare and dangerous—at night, the lack of power made it more difficult for the pilot to navigate and hard for the deploying soldiers to judge the distance to the ground. Some of the fast-rope soldiers had invented a new trick in the past few days—they dropped light sticks down to the ground before rappelling to get an idea of when to slow their descent.
3.42
Dilemma
Don waited for the diagnostics to end. They were taking forever, but there was nothing he could do. Staring at the PC didn’t help—the machine was just making sure everything was in order.
His nose started bleeding again.
Don reached up, flipping back the NBC hood and lifting the heavy metal helmet off his head, setting it down on the table next to the keyboard. As he flipped the helmet over, a hunk of his hair fell to the ground.
Don looked down at it and cursed as more blood poured from his nose. Walking back to his office, he found some tissues and balled one up, stuffing some up each nostril. At least the bleeding stopped.
He heard a low, throbbing sound.
Don knew immediately what the sound was and ran to the loading doors for a peak outside.
A helicopter was approaching from the south.
He shook his head—he was ready to go, and he didn’t need this. Soldiers and guns and curious members of the U.S. military.
He walked back over to the machine and made it almost all the way to the control PC, when his left leg locked up, and he tumbled heavily to the ground. There was a sudden, intense pain in his leg, like the worst cramp of his life, and the leg stiffened inside the metal suit.
