Two members of Davies’ team, a man and a woman, were sitting on the ledge, chatting, separated from a 45-story drop only by a flower box that lined the entire width of the patio. The aperture faced the sun, and had been transformed over time into a botanical garden of sorts, with bright, colorful flowers, and various species of tree. The first entries in the garden had been a gift by none other than Robert Mulvaney to the research team in thanks for their work. Keegan could never get a read on whether they wanted it, or simply accepted it. But he knew they spent a good deal of time out here, so they must’ve found it pleasant, at least.
“Peter, Tina, we need the space,” Davies said curtly to them. Knowing their place, Peter and Tina, both of whom Keegan had met at some point, immediately wrapped up their conversation and walked back into the office through the glass door. Then Davies took a seat on one of an array of cushioned chairs spread across the stone floor. “Tell me.”
Keegan maneuvered his big frame into one of the chairs facing Davies, and Amy sat in the chair next to his. He paused for a weighted moment, but not too long, before speaking. While he wanted to enunciate the critical nature of the situation, he didn’t want to overdramatize it. He knew enough about Davies to know that approach would turn him off. Without the deep breath that would usually kick off a conversation like this one, he delved into it for him. “The Attorney General is trying to shut us down,” he said.
Davies laughed. “What else is new?”
Keegan held up a finger and shook his head. “Yes, but this time he’s got some momentum,” he said, to which Davies rolled his eyes sarcastically. Davies had been around the SATP long enough that he wasn’t going to get excited about yet another rumor about shutting down the program. “Reilly got us together to let us know this is real.”
Davies shifted his weight in his chair. “So, the President, you mean, is trying to shut us down,” he said. “Got it. What’s his angle this time?”
“Robert.”
Davies considered that for a moment before nodding. “Yes, I could see that,” he said. “If he could demonize Robert and label him the poster child for a corrupt organization – sort of a fall from grace for him – he could get the political support he would need to shut us down. Or, at least create a temporary moratorium on our work while they run Robert and the program through the courts. It’s quite ingenious. There’s a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“He can’t prove anything.”
“Well, unfortunately,” Keegan said, “neither can we. And that’s where his opportunity is.”
“Ahhhh, the accusation,” Davies said, a step ahead of the conversation in his own thoughts. “What, are they going to blame him for something terrible?”
Now, Keegan let out the sigh. “No, I have a feeling they’re going to blame him for everything terrible.”
Davies continued along, “And there’s nothing we can do about it because, in theory, if Robert or anyone on your team goes back in time to change anything, it would become the reality, and be recorded as such in the present.” He paused. “You know, this was my concern from the beginning.”
“How so?” Amy said, speaking for the first time.
Davies turned to Amy, smiling again. “You see, my dear,” he said. “We have billions of dollars’ worth of research in this building, dwarfing the capacity of any research library on the planet.” Davies was well-known for highlighting his and his department’s resume in every conversation. “But since you have access to time travel, none of it really matters, does it? Not one piece of information that we have collected and hold as truth couldn’t be changed in one mission. And since we can’t send the entire library with you on a mission, the history would change without anyone knowing it – except, of course, whoever’s doing the time traveling, which in most cases is Robert. He’s an easy target. I’m surprised no one thought of this earlier. So, when’s this all happening?”
“Could be as soon as within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Good lord,” Davies said, laughing at their misfortune. “No time to waste then. What’s your plan to stop him?”
“Stop him?” It was important that Keegan have Davies be a part of the solution. Though he had to lead him into it. At least a little.
“Well, it’s unfathomable that you would just let him come in and shut everything down. Not when you have time travel at your disposal.”
Keegan shook his head. “I don’t know if stopping him is an option,” he said. “Since the cat’s out of the bag, they’re probably already watching.”
“So, what do you intend to do? You came to me for a reason.”
“Keegan wants to do the Eden mission,” Amy said, before Keegan could, himself. Which annoyed him. “He thinks that if we are able to solve the Creationism debate, it will overshadow any negative attention the Attorney General and the President are attempting to bring.”
Davies grinned at Amy, thinking, then looked slowly at Keegan. “Is this true?”
“More or less, yes,” he said, thinking he would’ve explained it differently, but that perhaps Amy’s overview was better than the one he’d been prepared to make. He’d been fighting with himself over the merits of his own argument since leaving the meeting with Reilly, formulating his talking points even as he was recruiting Amy to join him. All along, he knew the point he was trying to make in his mind, but the words hadn’t come together for him in a particularly compelling way. Amy had effectively captured it, though, so it was just as well that she’d jumped ahead of him.
“And you came to me to see if it can be done,” Davies said, continuing his thinking out loud.
“Well, no,” Keegan said. “To be honest with you, we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re going to do it – to save the program. Reilly’s on-board.” They were interrupted briefly when another member of the research team, a young woman, attempted to walk through the glass door, but was waved off aggressively by Davies, retreating into the office. “We’re here to see if you’d be willing and able to help educate us on the mission, so we can do it as safely as possible.”
Davies laughed, a reaction Keegan didn’t expect. “Let’s get one thing clear, Dr. McIntyre,” he said with unusual sarcasm. “You’re not doing this to save the program. You’re doing this for one last ride before the sun sets.” Keegan started to defend himself, but Davies talked over him. “No, no… I’m not judging you. Lord, no. My immediate reaction is to feel the same way about all of this as you do. But to undertake something like this, it is critical that your motive is clear. Because your actions down the road will depend heavily on why you’re doing it in the first place.”
Keegan sat back and put his hands up. “I can’t argue with you.”
“Good, you shouldn’t,” he said. Keegan hoped that was enough of a small victory to empower Davies to continue the conversation. Instead, Davies unexpectedly stood from his chair, which Keegan took as a bad sign. “Come with me,” he said, then turned and headed for the glass door.
After exchanging a quick glance, Keegan and Amy followed him. By the time they reached the door, he was halfway across the office, so they rushed to catch up. Davies led them back through the maze again to a stairwell along the south wall of the floor, where they took the stairs down two flights, emerging into an enormous room filled with file cabinets but devoid of people. A cadre of “smart” robots scurried in various directions along the floor, carrying various sizes of files and other materials with them from location to location.
Keegan had had the opportunity a few years before to learn the research team’s system: from their terminals upstairs, a member of the research team with appropriate authority could “order” materials from their terminal and the robots would seek them out and deliver them. The robots themselves were a stroke of genius, as each one was directly tied into the vast server farm that was the engine for SATP. Which meant that every robot had access to every bit of information stored in the facility, and could find any document
or file in a matter of minutes using a sophisticated algorithm intertwining bar coding, artificial intelligence, and GPS technologies. The key was that they remembered their paths. They did not need to store the actual information they were seeking, but the paths they took. Keegan had learned that a smart robot could find a document, deliver it, pick it up and return it to its original location – and then be moved a thousand miles away for 20 years, and without fail find its way back to the facility and secure that document again if asked. Of course, that was a claim of the manufacturer that had never been tested because the original crew of smart robots were still in operation, and none had ever left the building.
What the smart robots didn’t anticipate, however, were people moving among them, so Davies led them carefully through another maze of files to an area across the spacious floor. He stopped and pointed to at least a dozen cabinets. “You want to do the Eden mission within 24 hours?” he said. “Here’s what you need to learn.”
“Better start reading up, huh?” Keegan said, although knowing that others on the team would take Davies’ caveat very seriously, so he did, indeed, have to deal with it. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you can’t do it,” he said. For the first time, he looked Keegan in the eyes without the arrogance and sarcasm that had been prominent through the whole first part of the conversation. He was sincere.
“We have to,” Keegan said, quietly. He didn’t say it defiantly. Almost in defeat. As though they had no other choice.
“You’re not hearing me,” Davies said. “I’m saying that you can’t do it. You need help.”
“Who?” Amy asked.
“Well, there’s only one person who knows what you’ll be getting yourself into.”
“You?” Keegan said. “You’re not a time traveler, though. You’ve never-”
“Where do you stand on the debate?” Amy asked, cutting Keegan off.
He turned to look at her. “I don’t think that’s relevant,” he said. “Chester, I-”
“It’s absolutely relevant,” she said. “Every mission we’ve ever taken we’ve had a very good idea of what we’re getting into. For this one, there are differing opinions, even among our own team. If Chester’s research was done with a bias in either direction, the intelligence he offers could be more dangerous than if we had none.”
“Amy, the data is right here,” Keegan said, willfully allowing the annoyance to come through his voice. The fastest way to scare Davies off would be to show that they were disjointed as a team, which would be far riskier than having bad information. The possible outcomes were apparent – they were either going to land in a miraculous garden created by God himself, or they were going to land in the middle of a desert wasteland. It was clear to him. “The conflux of Creation stories from all cultures and religions and scientific study of the origin of man and the universe. All right here. I’m sure Chester’s team looked at everything from both sides of the argument.”
Amy was shaking her head. “That doesn’t matter. If they used the scientific method in their research, then that means they set out to prove a hypothesis. No one studies anything just for the sake of studying it. If there’s a bias-”
Now Keegan cut her off. “There’s no bias. This department is an objective resource. It-”
“Keegan, she’s right,” Davies said. “The truth is that despite all the research we could have possibly done, no one knows what we’ll find when we get there. There are scientific explanations for all the events that occurred in the various intelligent design stories from throughout the world, and there are plenty of religious explanations for the claims made by science. Do I believe that when we land in the Middle East thousands of years ago that there’ll be a lush garden with two naked people running around naming animals? I can’t say yes to that. But from years of research, do I see consistencies in the diverse tellings of how mankind came to be, that at least give me pause to think that maybe there are factors we hadn’t considered? I do.” He was interrupted as they all stepped sideways to provide enough room for an on-coming smart robot to speed past.
Keegan wasn’t about to get into a Creation debate standing there in the research facility, so he pushed to move the conversation forward. “And what does that all mean? Is she right? Are you leaning one way or the other?”
“I will tell you that at the outset of our research, as a scholar, the idea of a mythical garden where both God and Lucifer roamed freely seemed far-fetched,” he said. “In fact, when the request for research first crossed my desk, I was more amused than interested. It was a game. I didn’t do anything with it for at least a year, though I was asked about it a few times.”
“Who asked you?” Amy asked.
“Oh, Reilly a few times, but mostly Dipin. He seemed to have the mission on his priority list, but I don’t think he was as good a sales person with his colleagues as his father was. Don’t get me wrong – there’s been a natural progression with the missions that have been selected, so no way, despite all the research, would I have recommended this one be moved to the front of the list for any reason. However, one night here about three years ago – ah, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Keegan held out his hands in disbelief. “Chester, I think at this point…”
“Alright,” he said, his preference for belligerence having clearly subsided, “Dipin comes to see me – kind of like you came to see me here now. Out of the blue. He beats around the bush for some time, making small talk, before getting to what he really wants to ask, which is whether the Eden mission is viable. Well, at that point, I hadn’t done any work on it, so I had no good answer for him, one way or the other. I didn’t know if there would be repercussions for ignoring the work, but to be honest I didn’t care. They didn’t bring me here from Oxford to piss away my time doing pet projects for missions that were never going to happen.”
Another robot sped by, so Davies motioned for them to follow him again. They reconvened in the stairwell, stopping just inside the door. The lights were much brighter than in the research room, which was kept dark and cool, so Keegan squinted as Davies continued.
“Where was I?” he asked.
“Dipin Chopra came to see you,” Amy said.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “So Dipin then throws me for a loop. Here, I’m thinking he’s going to be irritated that I haven’t done anything, but instead he tells me to sit on it. Bury it. Keep the mission from ever seeing the light of day. Well, as you would imagine, that only piqued my interest. And you just saw the results of someone piquing my interest.”
“Do you know what his concerns were?” Amy asked.
“Not precisely,” he said, “but I have my suspicions.”
“Which were?”
“I think Dipin and his father knew things about time travel that were never passed on to the rest of the stakeholders in the program. About the dangers. About lines that shouldn’t be crossed.” He paused, thinking. “But Jay Chopra is dead, and Dipin has disappeared. So I guess we’ll never know.”
“Forgetting about whether there’s a bias or not,” Keegan said in an effort to bring the storytelling part of the conversation to a close, “because while that may have mattered yesterday, it’s not topical today, do you know enough about this mission to successfully guide us through?”
“I do,” Davies said, nodding.
“For whatever we find there?”
Davies sighed. “Let’s just say that I’ve heard your debates – I know about your little ping-pong game. Your opinions on this are interesting, but they are based on incomplete information and… Frankly, your own biases.” He motioned to Amy in deference to her earlier comments. “I may not have an answer as to what we’ll find there, but what knowledge I bring can be the difference between a successful mission and a disaster.”
Keegan looked at Amy. “I’m good with it. You?”
He could tell Amy wasn’t good with any of it, but after a moment she reluctantly nodded.
&nbs
p; “OK,” Davies said. “There’s lots to do. Who else is on the team?”
“Besides the three of us?” Keegan said. “We’re figuring that out next.”
“Well, you’d better get figuring. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Keegan looked at Amy and wondered if his sale job on Davies had been successful in recruiting her, as well.
CHAPTER 19
Landon tucked the last pair of his underwear into the top drawer of the dresser that had been provided for him. He’d not even had the chance to unpack his belongings before being scheduled for an emergency meeting in the Director’s office. Which, in itself, was unnerving, but worse without a plan and agenda. Claire had told him nothing about what was happening.
Having no perspective on how daily life was at SATP, Landon couldn’t possibly know if this was something of consequence, or an everyday political fire drill. From the way Robert had abruptly left the students, to Claire’s reaction and demeanor when she returned from wherever she had gone, he sensed it was something bigger than they’d seen before. For the past few hours since the tour had ended and he’d found his way back to his apartment, he’d tried to envision any possible extraordinary circumstances in the days leading up to his arrival, but all he could guess was that something must have transpired on Robert’s Egypt mission.
Glancing at his computer screen, he saw that he had just ten minutes to get to the 89th floor of the Newton Building for the meeting, and chastised himself for not leaving more time. Especially since he was only partly certain of how to get there. Leaving the unfinished box of clothes, he crossed the floor of his new living room and slipped his feet into his shoes. Reaching to open the door, he was surprised by a tone alerting that someone was on the other side. He opened it to find Claire standing in the hallway.
“I apologize for rushing out on you before,” she said. “Probably left you with all kinds of questions.” As he’d done, she’d also changed her clothes into something more casual, now that they weren’t in presentation mode – a pair of blue jeans and an orange tank top.
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