by Richard Todd
Kaomea smiled, “I think you’re overstating the potential downside Gunther. We’re within spec on the majority of specs. The majority of negative variances are negligible.”
“And I think you are playing fast and loose with the lives of everyone on this planet,” said Gunther.
The general and Gus looked at Gunther. This was the first time they had witnessed heated words from the normally genial scientist.
“Now I think somebody needs a nap,” laughed Kaomea.
The general short-circuited his instinct to lunge across the table at Kaomea. Before he could open his mouth to respond, Gus beat him to the punch.
“Shut up John!” snapped Gus. “Right now, Dr. Appel has a helluva lot more credibility at this table than you do. The specs are not flexible. Neither am I. At the outset of this project, you committed to meeting or exceeding each and every spec. We’re less than 30 days away from the jump date. We never should have been having this conversation so close to D-day. You’ve put the mission at risk. You’ve put lives at risk. This is a reprehensible, pathetic excuse for the deliverables you promised to this team!”
The smile on Kaomea’s face was replaced by stunned indignation. Zhang’s poker face never wavered.
“I only have one question for you at this time,” said Gus. “Can you complete this project within specifications prior to the jump date?”
Kaomea paused before speaking. In his career, he had grown accustomed to fawning and accolades from colleagues. No one had ever spoken to him with anything remotely resembling the white-hot contempt Gus had shown him. Humiliation and rage churned inside him.
“Yes,” Kaomea finally uttered. After an awkward silence, he said, “Will there be anything else?”
“No. You’re dismissed,” replied the general.
Kaomea collected his notebook and beat a hasty retreat from the meeting with Zhang in tow.
Gus turned to the general, “General, I am sorry. I’ve let you down. You have my word that I will turn this around.”
“I know you will,” replied the general.
Gunther was silent. The smile that normally lit his face had collapsed into a worried frown. He looked as though he had aged in the course of the short meeting.
“You’re worried,” the general said to Gunther.
“I’m worried,” confirmed Gunther. Until the moment of the exchange with Kaomea, Gunther had been immersed in the most fascinating of intellectual exercises, transforming theoretical physics into the actual possibility of sending people through time. In a matter of minutes, the Time Tunnel morphed from theory to titanic reality. The belated epiphany chilled Gunther’s bones as he now realized the red numbers on the big screen were not engineering power and gravity wave variances.
The numbers were body counts.
Time Tunnel Complex
Level 3—Kyle Mason’s apartment
October 26, 2008
23:00 hours
Annika rested her head on Kyle’s chest in bed. His arm wrapped around her bare back. In 10 hours, they would either be sent back in time, or into oblivion.
During their time together, Kyle had discovered a completely different Annika—one with vivid dreams and a child’s playfulness and mischievousness. He liked this Annika a lot. She liked this Annika too.
Annika liked being able to trust Kyle. She was not accustomed to lowering her shields around people. It was, at once, uncomfortable and exhilarating for her to be vulnerable around him. The more vulnerable she allowed herself to be, the happier she became. Her face lit up when she saw him. Though they had kept their relationship discreet for its first few weeks, it wasn’t long before the general outed them. He couldn’t help but notice that Annika was treating Kyle with much less contempt than everyone else in the complex. He reminded her that life was much too short not to seize every waking moment.
“Carpe diem,” the general advised Annika.
The general laughed as, for once, Annika was caught speechless. She didn’t know how to feel about her life in this strange place. Her rigid discipline, which had enabled her to compete with the big boys throughout her military career, seemed to be unraveling into chaos. She didn’t entirely trust chaos, though she secretly kinda liked it.
Annika righted her head, resting her chin on Kyle’s chest.
“Kyle?” she asked.
“Hmm?” Kyle responded.
“Should we talk about the future?” she asked.
“Uh oh. Incoming,” Kyle joked.
“Seriously, what are we? Are we a couple? Are we friends with benefits?”
“Whoa, back up,” Kyle said, “When did we become friends?”
Annika slugged him in the shoulder.
“Fine!” she said in a huff, rolling off his chest onto her side in bed, her back to him.
Kyle put his arm around her small shoulders. It never ceased to amaze him how such a small body could unleash so much physical destruction. Though his sparring sessions with her had boosted his own fighting performance, he was not her equal in the arena.
“Let me try this on,” Kyle said. “How about, I love you.”
She spun to face him, beaming a big smile from her face. She kissed him.
“Then, I say, I love you too,” Annika replied, allowing a rare giggle to escape.
They embraced, happy in each other’s arms. For Kyle, his love for Annika was a different one than the head-over-heels kind he had known with Padma. His relationship with Annika had been forged like beating two molten alien metals into a single indestructible alloy. Through hardship and circumstance—even physical pain—the two had become inseparably close. Cracks in the walls they had erected to block out pain had enabled them to enter and fill each other’s empty spaces. For the first time in years, Kyle and Annika looked forward to the future, once they concluded their business in the past.
Time Tunnel Complex
Level 6—Time Tunnel Chamber
October 27, 2008
08:00 hours
Annika and Kyle stood in a small charcoal gray anteroom facing a heavy steel door. In a few moments, technicians on the other side would unlock the door to the Time Tunnel chamber. The temponauts were wearing casual attire, not the “astronaut coveralls” Kyle had originally envisioned when he was told he would be sent back in time. Kyle wore jeans and a white dress shirt. Annika also wore jeans, a long sleeved black T, and ankle boots. There were no cameras in this room. Kyle and Annika knew this would be their last private moment before they crossed time. Their eyes met. They embraced and then shared a long final kiss.
They heard a loud “clack” as the big gray metal door unlatched. The door swung open and two technicians, wearing white clean room overalls, hoods, and booties ushered them in. They entered a square black room, about 100 feet by 100 feet, with a ceiling the height of a college basketball arena. In the center of the room was a glass sphere, approximately 15 feet in diameter. The sphere was suspended five feet off the floor by a black metal platform. Stairs from the floor led to an open hatch on the side of the sphere.
Surrounding the sphere was a black carbon donut-shaped ring, 75 feet in diameter, with a width of 20 feet. The ring was suspended from the ceiling with cables. Cameras were positioned on the walls of the chamber for operators in mission control to view the two temponauts.
The technicians assisted Annika and Kyle up the steps and into the chamber and pointed them to yellow targets painted on the floor of the sphere where they were told to position their feet. They stood side-by-side. The technicians latched the glass door to the chamber and then removed the steps from the room before exiting.
The heavy vault door to the Time Tunnel slammed shut with a metallic “clank” that echoed through the chamber. Kyle and Annika stood alone, facing forward, their feet squarely within the yellow circle targets. The chamber was completely silent—so much so that Kyle could hear Annika’s breathing. He could sense the rise and fall of her chest with each breath. He wondered if he would ever be with her again
.
Mission control buzzed in preparation for the time jump. The room swelled with over one hundred staff, performing final system checks. Staff members darted about the room, congregating for brief conversations with other staff before settling at their workstations. Dozens of workstation display screens were alive with numbers, graphs, and tables, as well as images of system components. On the center of the giant screen at the front of Mission Control was the live image of the Time Tunnel chamber with Kyle and Annika in the glass sphere. Key system performance metrics and status indicators flanked the video feed of the temponauts.
Gus Ferrer stood at his mid-tier mezzanine station, surveying the room and staff. The room was electric with anticipation. One mezzanine below, John Kaomea’s team was huddled at the engineering workstation hive, reviewing last minute system readout numbers. Gunther Appel sat nearby in his wheelchair. He tried to eavesdrop the engineers’ conversation, though they largely ignored him. John’s confidence in himself and his team of engineers was supreme. He did not require assistance from the aging physicist.
Roger Summit and Aysha Voong sat with their history hive, huddled around the rose-colored “TVA” light cube. If all went according to plan, the “TVA” cube would light up the moment the temponauts disappeared, signaling that the timeline had changed.
Lara Meredith stood at the side of the room, near the vault door, wearing her lab coat. Her arms were folded across her chest. She had little to contribute to the time jump beyond monitoring Kyle and Annika’s vital signs up to the moment of the jump. She had copied her workstation’s readout of heartbeats, temperature, respiration, and blood pressure to the giant screen so she could monitor from a distance.
Gus looked at the clock readout on the giant screen and clicked a switch attached to his belt to broadcast a message throughout the complex. He spoke into his wireless headset microphone.
“All staff, this is mission control. Countdown is T-minus ten minutes and counting. Prepare for final system check at T-minus five minutes. Repeat: final system check at T-minus five,” Gus said with his trademark scowl.
The bright blue strobes on the mission control vault door began to flash. The door swung open and General Craig entered the room. His attire was uncharacteristically formal, wearing his crisp green full general’s uniform. Four brass stars gleamed on his epaulettes. Lara went to the general and kissed him on the cheek.
“You look positively dashing!” Lara said, smiling.
General Craig returned her smile, “I thought I would dress for the occasion. It’s not every day that I get to send off time travelers.”
“Well, you’re certainly sending them off in style,” Lara replied.
The general nodded toward the big screen and the readout of the temponauts’ vital statistics, “How are our time travelers faring?”
“You’re asking me about their current condition?” replied Lara.
“Yes,” answered the general.
“Based on all available medical data?”
“Yes.”
“In my professional opinion, I’d say they’re scared shitless,” said Lara.
“Thank you for that scholarly assessment, Doctor,” replied the general, with a sharp look.
“Anytime, General,” replied Lara, with a wink.
The general excused himself and walked to Gus. They shook hands.
“General,” Gus said, acknowledging him.
“Are we good to go?” asked the general.
“Yes sir, I believe we are. Final systems check in three minutes. Did you bring your hardware, General?” asked Gus.
“I did,” replied the general. He reached to the back of his neck and tugged a black lanyard worn beneath his uniform, revealing a large red anodized metal key. The shiny red key was rectangular, with square edges and punched square holes. An hourglass logo was cut out of the key handle. The general hung the key by its lanyard, allowing it to rest on his chest next to his Time Tunnel card key.
Gus removed his key. It was similar to the general’s with a blue tint instead of the general’s red. The keys would need to be inserted and turned simultaneously in order to enable the jump.
The general noticed that John Kaomea was having a serious conversation with Zhang Li. The two grew increasingly animated—the conversation was building to an argument. The general had never seen Zhang lose her composure before. The general nudged Gus. Gus turned to the engineering team.
“Is there a problem?” asked Gus in his commanding style.
John turned to Gus, “No Gus, there is no problem. I apologize for the disturbance.”
John glared at Zhang, who turned and walked to her workstation without saying another word.
Gus and the general exchanged looks. Gus clicked his microphone switch to address the Time Tunnel staff throughout the complex.
“All staff, time is T-minus five minutes. We are at final system check,” said Gus. “Respond when called.”
“Reactor,” Gus said.
“Reactor go,” replied an engineer. “Power at 30 percent. Go for throttle up.”
“Temporal engine,” said Gus.
“Temporal engine go” replied another engineer.
“Navigation,” said Gus.
“Temporal navigation go.”
“Bio,” said Gus.
“Bio go.”
“Transponder,” said Gus.
“Transponder go.”
“All systems, all staff, punch your status buttons now,” said Gus.
At that moment, the hundreds of people throughout the complex tied to the operation of the Time Tunnel pushed one of two buttons—green or red. A single red button would abort the time jump. Gus watched the board for results:
Percentage of respondents: 100%
Percentage green: 100%
Percentage red: 0%
“Throttle power to sixty percent,” ordered Gus. “Retract Tunnel moorings.”
Gus and the general watched the live video feed of the Time Tunnel chamber on the giant screen. The cables supporting the donut ring detached and retracted into the ceiling. The platform that supported the sphere retracted into the floor. The ring and sphere, supported with magnetic repulsion, floated in space like a man-made Saturn.
Inside the chamber, Kyle and Annika could see their sphere ascend some 20 feet to the center height of the room. The carbon donut rose with the sphere. The silence in the sphere was replaced by a deep profondo hum, bringing with it a vibration that gently trembled through their bodies. It was time.
“Any last words?” asked Kyle.
“I’m scared,” replied Annika.
He reached for her hand. She grasped his tightly and closed her eyes.
The hum increased in intensity, accompanied by a bright white light. The light did not appear to have a source—it was simply as though the brightness of the room’s lighting had been turned up to an uncomfortable level.
Inside mission control, Gus turned to the general, “General, we are ready to proceed on your order.”
“Proceed,” the general replied.
“General, please insert your key into the panel. Wait for my mark before you turn the key,” said Gus.
Both men removed their lanyards and inserted the keys into the panel in front of them.
Gus said, “Turn on my mark—three—two—one—mark!”
Both men turned their keys. The status lamp next to the “Armed” indicator turned from green to red. A red “Armed” indicator flashed on all monitor displays. A klaxon alarm sounded. A large button on Gus’ panel marked “Commit” flashed on.
“Reactor—throttle power to 100 percent,” said Gus.
“Throttle to 100—roger that,” came the reply.
The command to throttle up power threw the Time Tunnel’s energy reactor into overdrive. In a chamber beneath where Kyle and Annika stood, matter and antimatter were injected in equal parts, annihilating with monstrous energy.
Inside the Time Tunnel’s glass bubble, Kyle and Annika
felt the vibration increase dramatically, accompanied by a jump in the lighting brightness. Even through their tightly shut eyelids, the brightness strained their eyes. The vibration shook them forcefully, though they did not lose their balance—Kyle realized that it was not the chamber that was vibrating—it was their bodies. The very atoms that comprised them were shaking like vibrating grains of sand.
Gus reached for the “Commit” button. He looked at the general. The general nodded. Gus pressed the button.
The giant monitor beamed a blinding white light from the chamber video feed, forcing the mission control staff to turn away. Moments later, the light faded, as system power levels dropped to zero. The monitor flickered back to life. The Time Tunnel chamber was empty. Kyle and Annika were gone.
