Time Frame (Split Second Book 2)

by Douglas E. Richards

  “We’ve analyzed the wonders and dangers of time travel before,” said Allen. “In many ways it would be great. But in many others it would be exceedingly bad.”

  “Just for the sake of this discussion,” said Jenna, “I’d like to imagine a world with unlimited time travel. I’d like to look at the situation holistically.” She paused. “By using bigger kettles to repeatedly send slightly smaller ones back through time, every man, woman, and child could have their own. Talk about your handy appliances. Anyone could copy anything. Diamonds, gold . . . food and water.” She arched an eyebrow. “Hunger, thirst, poverty—these would all go extinct.”

  “And energy would become unlimited,” said Tini. “We can’t tap the dark energy field directly, but each person could use it to copy millions of charged batteries. And there are more sophisticated strategies for using time travel as an energy source, which I won’t get into.”

  “If billions of people are resetting the universe forty-five millionths to a half-second back,” said Allen, “wouldn’t this eventually stall it out? Or keep it yo-yoing back and forth within a half-second interval forever?”

  “Actually, no,” said Wexler. “As you know, we think time travel only resets what is locally affected. If I copy a piece of string a million times, the rest of the universe isn’t affected and rolls on its merry way as before. Only a very small chunk of the universe near me would notice that a million pieces of string had suddenly materialized. And I wouldn’t even be aware that my local universe had been delayed, because it would reset at the earlier time period. When it resumed, I would never know that it had gone forward, and then backed up, even once, let alone a million times.”

  “If the rest of the universe isn’t reset,” said Blake, “wouldn’t that result in time moving at different rates, depending on how close you are to the point of time travel?”

  “This is true,” replied Wexler. “But Nature doesn’t see this as anything new. Einstein showed that time is running at different rates already, all over the place, depending on how fast you’re going and depending on gravity. Time on top of a mountain runs faster than time at sea level, because the gravitational field is slightly less on the mountain. We now have clocks sophisticated enough to confirm this.”

  “Thanks,” said Blake. “This is helpful. I’m sure we all have additional questions, but we should let Jenna continue,” he added, gesturing to the woman in question.

  Jenna nodded. “So to sum up,” she said, “if we were to spread this tech widely, everyone would get unlimited food, energy, and wealth. No one would ever need to work again.”

  “Doesn’t sound terrible so far,” said Allen.

  “If time travel were widespread,” said Cargill, “there are people who would also advocate for making multiple copies of the greatest minds of our generation. Despite the legal and ethical issues.”

  “People like Edgar Knight?” said Jenna in disgust.

  “You’d be surprised,” said Cargill. “This wouldn’t just find support among ethically challenged megalomaniacs. In my view, many ordinary, reasonable people would support it too. On paper, it would be very compelling.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Jenna. “Which just adds to the complexity of a world with time travel in it.”

  She paused for a few seconds to see if anyone else would jump in. When no one did, she continued. “Just to be complete,” she said, “I’d like to quickly revisit the con side of the ledger, which we’ve discussed multiple times. Uranium could be copied. Weapons. Poison. Each person could make thousands of copies of themselves. Armies could be teleported inside buildings, behind enemy lines. The technology would bring total chaos.”

  “That sums it up pretty well,” said Cargill. “Can I assume you’ve come up with additions to this list?”

  “You know me too well, Lee,” said Jenna with a twinkle in her eye. “One other side effect would be that wealth would lose all meaning. If everyone can make mountains of flawless diamonds, they become the opposite of rare. They lose all value. This applies broadly. In an economy of unlimited wealth, money means nothing.”

  “Getting used to this new world would require an adjustment,” said Allen, “but we’d manage.”

  “I think Jenna is making a broader point,” said Blake. “If every comfort is taken care of, what would be the incentive to advance any further? What would motivate people? Jenna mentioned that no one would ever need to work again, and Joe said that this didn’t sound so terrible. But I disagree, and I think Jenna does too. It could be a devastating blow to the species. There are some who think we handle hell better than we handle paradise.”

  “You read my mind,” said Jenna. “I based my concerns on my recent study of human happiness and human behavior. But go ahead, Aaron. I think you have an instinctive grasp of this.”

  “In my view,” said Blake, “it’s very simple. Unending leisure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It would drive me mad very quickly. And while it would take a lot longer for most people to grow bored and listless and unhappy, it would eventually happen to everyone. We’re wired to get the most satisfaction from striving toward goals, from overcoming challenges. True, I’m an extreme case. I tend to get bored unless my life is on the line, which is something I’m fighting to change. But humanity isn’t built for perfection. Our psyches aren’t ready for everything to be handed to us.”

  “That about sums up what I was planning to say,” said Jenna. “Until recently, I always thought that bringing about heaven on earth would be a good thing. Utopia. The goal of humanity throughout the ages. But it’s possible unlimited wealth and leisure might not be utopia, after all. Might even be a bad thing.”

  Lee Cargill glanced down at his phone and grimaced. “Can we pause for just a moment?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Jenna.

  “Is this an emergency?” he said in low tones as he answered. After pausing to listen to a reply he added, “Okay to get back to you in just a few minutes?” When he ended the call a moment later, the answer he had received from the caller became obvious.

  “Sorry,” said the head of Q5, waving a hand at Jenna. “Please continue.”

  “As we’ve agreed,” said Jenna, “time travel technology will get out there. Sooner or later. Look at the nuclear bomb. At the time it was developed, it was a greater destructive force than anyone had ever even conceived of. In the beginning, the US was the only country with the bomb, and did its best to keep it that way.”

  She shook her head. “But we all know how that turned out. Yet the world has survived, at least until now. So I say we have to assume our pet technology will get out there soon, and rush to find a way to survive the, um . . . fallout. More than survive. Benefit from its widespread use.”

  “Which is where your time travel suppressor comes in,” said Cargill.

  “That’s right,” replied Jenna.

  “But if everyone on Earth has his or her own kettle,” said Allen, “you can’t possibly suppress them all.”

  Jenna Morrison raised her eyebrows. “Why not?” she said. “Put the suppressors on thousands of small satellites. Ring the entire globe. Produce one, and then make as many duplicates as you need. Many decades ago we found a way to connect every home in America to telephone and power lines. If we could accomplish that way back then, we can surely accomplish this now.”

  “You’d really want to turn the entire Earth into a time travel dead-zone?” said Blake.

  “Not necessarily,” said Jenna. “Let’s get the suppressor fields up and running. Then we can decide how to play our hand. Perhaps you set aside a central location in each major city around the world where time travel is allowed. One small enough that authorities can maintain absolute control of it, ensuring the technology is only used for the common good. Authorized uses only, like duplicating food, creating unlimited energy, and so on.”

  “And countries like Iran?” said Cargill. “It’s true that most of their territory would still be a time travel dead-zo
ne, so at least they wouldn’t be able to teleport arms or armies beyond their borders. But countries like this would be sure to use the process for ill.”

  “I agree,” said Jenna. “Maybe you’d have a world body that would deny time travel zones to countries with massive human rights violations. Those wishing to destroy their neighbors, or those supporting terrorism.”

  “Even in approved countries,” said Blake, “how could you ensure that the oversight of the time travel permissible zones was adequate?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jenna. “Any group of people can be corrupted. So do we let AIs play a role in monitoring? Which begs other questions and concerns. Who would program the AI? Or should we put these responsibilities in the hands of those among us who are known to be compassionate, who have demonstrated a long history of charity and non-violence? Or do we have the time travel sites of each country managed by panels drawn from ten or twenty other countries?”

  “Interesting ideas,” allowed Cargill.

  “Or maybe terrible ones,” said Jenna. “I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have any of the answers. I just believe we should build a suppressor field so we at least have the luxury of asking the questions. If this group agrees to devote itself to coming up with suppressor technology, second only to interstellar travel and true teleportation, I’ll devote myself to finding answers. I can study the issues we’ve just discussed, with the expectation of leading many more meetings like this one to debate ideas as we move forward.”

  “And if you were able to lead us to a solution that we think is workable,” said Cargill, “what then? Would you advise that we don’t wait for a leak? That we just announce this to the world ourselves, along with our plan to ensure its safe use?”

  “Yes,” replied Jenna. “At that point, why not? The potential for good, the potential to change the world forever, would outweigh the potential for disaster.”

  Cargill nodded and then put on a thoughtful expression for several long seconds. “Does everyone agree with the initial priorities Jenna has laid out?” he asked the group.

  “Absolutely,” said Blake without hesitation, and the rest of the group chimed in with their wholehearted support as well.

  “Very, very impressive, Jenna,” said Cargill. “Well done. I thought you’d be the right woman for the job, but I had no idea how right. While I was thinking small, you were thinking big. I was expecting you to make recommendations for how best to keep this secret. Instead, you were thinking of how best to reveal it. I was thinking about how best to use this to do small things, like funneling money to anti-terror groups and duplicating large quantities of impossible-to-manufacture pharmaceuticals. You were thinking about how best to utterly transform human civilization.”

  The head of Q5 shook his head. “And you made your case so well that your conclusions seem ridiculously obvious in retrospect. It’s hard to imagine now that I didn’t see this instantly. Only I didn’t. Not before you pulled up the curtain.”

  “Thanks,” said Jenna, almost sheepishly, surprised and delighted by this reaction. “But setting out goals is the easy part. Now it’s up to people like Nathan and Daniel to actually achieve them.”

  “True,” said Blake. “But even the best marksman can’t hit the target unless he knows what he’s supposed to be shooting at.”

  “Spoken like a true warrior,” said Jenna in amusement.

  25

  After the meeting concluded, Cargill asked Aaron Blake to hang back with him once again.

  “That was your . . . counterpart who called during the meeting,” he explained when they were alone in the room. “My phone pinpointed the call as having come from inside China. I only put it off because I knew the meeting was nearly over and I wanted you involved.”

  Blake checked the time on his phone and frowned. “Shouldn’t he be in North Korea by now?”

  Cargill nodded grimly. “Let’s find out what’s going on,” he said, and then asked his phone to establish an audio-only connection.

  Blake had studiously avoided his doppelganger while he was still within the confines of Cheyenne Mountain, and Cargill had made certain that no one else on the team would run into him either. Blake had no interest in seeing himself as others saw him, and he would only feel guilty that this man was being sent on a kamikaze mission while Blake stayed back, despite there being nothing to differentiate the two except for a split-second difference in their ages.

  But given the operation had evidently hit a snag, Cargill was right to have him be part of the conversation, despite his wish to avoid talking to himself. Three heads were better than one, even if two of the three heads were identical.

  The Blake in China answered the call, but only on the fifth ring, and his tone made it clear they had awakened him from a sound sleep.

  “Sorry to wake you,” said Cargill after a quick greeting, and after explaining that Blake was in the room with him. “But you did just call me a few minutes ago.”

  “I’m more exhausted than I thought,” came the reply, and the Blake in Cheyenne Mountain grimaced. In his own head, his voice sounded much deeper. Like Idris Elba or James Earl Jones. But the voice coming from his double sounded nothing like these men. “The mission has encountered a few . . . hiccups.”

  “I gathered,” said Cargill. “You sound like shit, Aaron,” he added bluntly.

  “I look and feel like shit, too,” replied Blake. “Don’t be too jealous, Aaron,” he added wryly to his double inside Cheyenne Mountain. “The need for my death at the end of this Op puts a damper on things, but it’s proving to be a real challenge. Plenty of excitement already. And there you are stuck behind a desk, probably bored out of your mind.”

  Blake smiled. It wasn’t a joke. The truth was that he would have been jealous if not for the mission’s finality. “Lee manages to keep things interesting enough around here that my envy of you doesn’t get too out of control,” he replied with a smile. “So what’s going on?”

  Blake told them. About the Triad war at the airport, how he had driven away—as far as he knew, the sole survivor—and how he had come to be in a truck in the woods, babysitting a refrigerator and waiting for roadblocks to be withdrawn to proceed. Roadblocks clearly established by the Chinese military.

  “Impressive moves,” said Blake when he had finished, and Cargill nodded his agreement.

  “Not really,” replied Blake. “Nothing any other Aaron Blake couldn’t have managed.”

  The Blake in Cheyenne Mountain smiled broadly. His double may have been weary, but he still retained his sense of humor.

  “I’ll do what I can to explore the situation from here,” said Cargill. “If we get intel on what’s going on, I’ll let you know. But I don’t expect much. There was no way the difficulty at the airport could have been anticipated. But I can’t believe it had anything to do with your mission. If it did, they would have focused their forces mostly on you, rather than spreading them out. And their goal would have been to capture you rather than kill you.”

  “Agreed,” said the Blake in China. “But a rival triad isn’t the problem anymore. It’s the Chinese military. By now they’ve discovered the plane I was on when I arrived in Shenyang. They’ve learned that I boarded it in Beijing. They’ve learned that the plane that brought me to China is untraceable. Not to mention that I’m most likely an American.”

  “No doubt you’ve piqued their curiosity,” said Cargill. “But it’s hard to believe they’re going to this much trouble to find you. Especially since they have no idea what they’re after, or how important you really are. And they have no idea what your refrigerator can do.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Blake. “Which is why I expect this fishing expedition to end soon. I’m sure they’ll dismantle their roadblocks by tomorrow night.”

  “Do you still believe you can carry out the mission?” asked Cargill.

  “No question about it. Surviving the airport attack was the dicey part. Anyone could handle things
from here. Even if they weren’t Aaron Blake.”

  “Hard to imagine,” said Aaron Blake.

  The Blake in China chuckled, but even this sounded dead tired. “Once I’m off this call,” he said, “I’ll get some quality sleep. Enough so that I’ll be fully rejuvenated. Then I’ll do some recon. I’ve got a bike with me, as you know.”

  “How will you avoid your devastatingly handsome Caucasian face being seen while you’re on the motorcycle?” asked Blake.

  “When I planned out this mission,” replied his double, “I war-gamed out the possibility I’d need to use the bike, unlikely as I thought it was. I had Zhang prepare a duffel bag to my specs. I’ll be wearing a helmet and goggles. I shouldn’t stand out as a Caucasian.”

  “And what if the roadblocks remain up tomorrow night?” asked Cargill.

  “Then I’ll continue to wait them out. If they’re still up for a third night, it’ll be hard not to believe they know more about my cargo than they should. But this is a bridge I don’t expect to have to cross.”

  “You really think you could keep a semi hidden for that long?” said Cargill dubiously.

  “Yes. Maybe indefinitely. As I said, K-1 helped me find the perfect hiding place. And I’ve got all I need to live. A bottle of water, a piece of beef jerky, and a roll of toilet paper. With my trusty time machine, I can make enough copies of these items to supply an army.”

  “And what army wouldn’t be excited about living on nothing but beef jerky and toilet paper?” said Cargill in amusement.

  The Blake in China managed a weary chuckle yet again. “The Sub-Zero is truly a gift that keeps on giving.”

  “Enjoy your jerky, Aaron,” said Cargill. “I’ll leave you to get some sleep. But before I sign off,” he added, “I want to commend you. Given what happened, I can’t imagine anyone else making it as far as you have, as well as you have. Truly outstanding. Godspeed from here on out, my friend.”