The Sphere: A Journey In Time (19 page)

"You mistake me, Addy, Carlo will insist upon it. She's one of his girlfriends." Marina grinned, and I couldn't help but return it with excitement.

Chapter 19

I was relieved to find out that Carlo knew how to fly and there was a sea plane docked in a hidden alcove on the other side of the island. The next afternoon I would be meeting someone who could potentially erase the last 90 years of everyone's lives. Adam would live. I'd see Jim and Noah again. Everything would go back to normal. And I'd find a way to exact my revenge against a company that I grew to loathe more and more with each new story I heard about them.

Carlo left early in the morning. I was so nervous I could barely eat, but Marina insisted I at least go through the motions. I managed to get some fruit down but mostly pushed the food around on my plate. "Marina, one thing you didn't tell me about last night; Noah, is he still alive?"

"That I'm not sure of. When Jim returned here Noah struck out on his own. He told Jim he would find him a cure, but Jim never held much stock in that idea. He hasn't been in touch with any of us, so who knows?"

I had kept only a vague hope that Noah was still alive. I knew from my dealings with his prior older self that his personality would still have glimmers of my friend, probably more so given he knew who he was, and even that would be better than nothing.

Marina interrupted my thoughts. "Have you decided where you are going?"

"You mean in time?"

"Yes."

"Well I figured I'd go back where I belong. Ninety years ago when I was supposed to have arrived."

"Just a few days before the Gardian attack?"

I paused, I knew where she was going. "Yes. I don't think I have another choice."

"You know this place. You know the sorts of things they're capable of. Do you really want to go back there?"

"It's the only life I know. And as much as I hate those people right now, I need to get back there. Hope that I can just escape with Jim and Noah." My thirst for revenge was diminished by the idea of escaping with them.

"There will be two spheres," she said.

"Yes? So?"

"So they'll send one sphere back to be destroyed. And then what? Hide the existence of the other sphere?"

"Probably."

"And then the Gardians leave. And what do you think they'll do then?"

"They won't let things go on as they have." I realized the truth. Even if they took the sphere and started over somewhere else, I wouldn't be going with them. I would face the same choice that had led Noah to a desire for self-destruction. "They certainly won't let
me
go on as I have."

"What is it that you really want, Adelaide?"

"I want to go back to when I didn't know any of this. Back to when I did my job and accepted the rules because I figured they just knew better than me."

"Going back in time will never erase what you know. That's not an option. What else do you really want?"

I thought about it. I wasn't really sure. I wanted to be happy again. The more I thought about it, I didn't think I could be happy with that place going on as it did, given what I knew. The rage surfaced again as I thought of the children that had been abducted and the people who had died or had their lives otherwise taken from them. "I want them to suffer."

"Vengeance doesn't solve any problems."

I nearly snarled at her, "No, but it will make me feel better!"

She was not phased by my outburst. "For some time maybe."

I wondered if years on a tropical island gave a person such a mellow, practical demeanor, and if I could benefit from that. "I should let the Gardians take over anyway."

"Innocent people died in that attack."

I didn't want to listen to her anymore. She was making too much sense. It all went back to my first mistake; letting that woman see us disappear and take Noah's journal. But crossing back into my own timeline like that could be fraught with peril. It's why we were never allowed to go back again on the same mission if we made a mistake. For all I knew that was more of the lies we had been fed to keep us in line. That disobedience had resulted in two spheres though.

If the programmer could send me somewhere close by, I could find that Gardian woman and distract her until Noah and I disappeared and then collect his things and return. I could correct my first mistake. And then what? Perhaps go back to when I should have returned and force them to erase my memory? Would they do that? Then let me continue to be a librarian alongside Noah? I doubted that. If nothing else though, I would fix my first mistake. I would go back and keep that Gardian woman from learning too much. The rest I could figure out later.

We could hear the engine from the sea plane approaching and walked out to the end of the dock to meet them. A woman jumped out of the copilot seat, and Carlo climbed down after her. She was in her early nineties by the look of her, and terribly frail looking. I could hardly imagine her being able to move people with her mind, it seemed like it would take a much stronger person. She stuck out a slender hand towards me. "Hello Adelaide, I'm Erica."

From the stories I had heard I was still expecting her to be a young girl and was having trouble rewiring that expectation in my mind to this older woman. I took her hand, suddenly feeling very young in the present company. "Hello, Erica, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine. I've been looking forward to this immensely. Since you arrived a few days ago, I've been keeping an extra good tab on you, though from my point of view, I've been aware of you for years."

It felt strange to be greeted as though she's known me for longer than I've been alive. Like someone who's watched me grow up from afar, even though it'd been just over a week for me since she would have noticed me. I didn't know what to say.

Marina saved us from the awkwardness. "Let's have some tea, shall we?" She caught my eye and nodded back towards the beach. I'd been anxious for this meeting all night, and now that it was here I felt strangely inadequate, like I wasn't worthy of the privilege that this sphere bestowed on me. The four of us sat around the table, Carlo and Erica holding hands. "Adelaide seems a bit lost as to what she should do," Marina said to Erica.

"That's understandable. It's a big decision. One I think you should be a bit more informed on before making. Surely, you have questions about what happens to us if I send you back?"

My brain started to kick back into gear. I hadn’t really considered what would happen to the rest of the timeline and I felt guilty for not considering those around me. "Well, yes. What does happen? If I go back and fix things so the lab never gets attacked?"

"This timeline is already in effect, it cannot be deleted. We will go on, just as we have, living our lives as they have been up to this point. We're already an abnormality. As you already know, the Gardian woman Sarah was never supposed to see you or find Noah's belongings. Likewise, Noah was never supposed to get stuck there nor find his way back to his original timeline. Each of those events created separate timelines. Once established, they cannot be undone. I can sense them, though not as well as this one. There is another version of me, another Erica, who knows nothing of you or of the laboratory you came from. She grew up, eventually learned to control her nightmares though she never learned the truth of what has happened to her. Most of your missions were small enough that the splinters they made in time were able to self-correct. The people who ran your lab were right to keep you out of important events. These short splinters are able to work themselves back into their original timelines. It's like time wants to heal itself, like it knows how things are meant to be."

"And this timeline was never meant to be?"

"No. But there is nothing you can do about that now. Like I said, I can sense the other versions of myself. Even though I know it is me, it is still not this version of me."

"How many timelines are there?" I asked.

"Three major timeline splits have arisen from the events surrounding Noah's initial problems with the sphere. There was a split from his being there, he was starting to push events in different directions. Then there was another split when his older self arrived back in your original timeline. Then there was another split that started with the discovery of his journal, though it remained very close to the original timeline and did not become very divergent until the attack on the laboratory. That's actually the one you're in now. So three major splits from the first timeline."

"Which one do I actually belong in?"

"You belong in different splits at different times. It's hard to say. There is one other version of you as well."

I almost laughed at her, the idea sounded so ridiculous. I tried to wrap my head around it, tried to sense the other version of myself like Erica said she could feel hers. I figured it was futile, but I needed something else to help focus my train of thought. My head fell into my hands and I rubbed my temples, trying to straighten out my mind. "Only one? But you said there are 4 timelines. Have I died in the other timelines?"

"Eventually both of you will die. When you travel with the sphere your existence travels within your current timeline. But if you cause a split, you travel into that new timeline. Everyone else who existed in that one is recreated in the split. So there are four versions of the rest of us.

I smiled at the thought of that. "So I'm recreating the universe around me?" It seemed like an awful lot of fuss for one person.

"Well you're not doing it, but you're causing it to happen."

"So even if I go back and fix things so that Noah's journal is never found, this timeline will still go on."

"Yes."

"Then what's the point?"

"It will at least get you back to where you belong. That timeline is still going along."

"What happens if I never go back to my own time?"

"Neither you nor Noah will make it back to where you started. The lab will close without a sphere. It will be similar to this timeline, but the attack on the lab will not be the impetus for its closing."

"Then I should just stay here. Let things end the way they have."

"That is certainly a possibility. And the choice is yours. Though you don't belong here, I can feel that it's wrong."

I didn't belong here. The words hurt. She was right, I was out of place here. And I couldn't imagine staying and leaving things alone.

I had forgotten anyone but Erica was still here, and it surprised me when Marina broke in at that point.

"Surveillance is not what it used to be and the lab has long since closed, but there are still people watching, Adelaide. From Noah's description of events and from what little they could get out of the programmer who got you here before they killed him, they know you were sent somewhere in the future."

I turned to look at her as she spoke. "Then why didn't they keep the lab open to wait for me?"

"There were many activities going on at the lab, lots of research. But the most lucrative was the time travel. People who knew, and there weren't many of them, paid well to have their questions answered. When they realized it would potentially be many years before they'd be able to get their sphere back they couldn't afford to keep everything else going."

I shuddered at the thought of what other activities they could be doing, given how they treated us. "What other kinds of research?"

"I know you think they're evil, Adelaide, but they were making real strides in vaccines and technological breakthroughs. They were doing good work, but it wasn't enough. The sphere was their prize."

A question that burned in the back of my mind for years resurfaced suddenly. "Where did they get the sphere?"

Erica was the one who responded, "It was an accidental creation. A man working on a teleportation device created the sphere. He figured out the need for a fixed point that the user could keep with them. He had the gift of the programmers, but thought it was space, not time, that he was seeing. Shortly after he realized what he had done, he refused to make another. He thought the technology was too dangerous for anyone to use. The lab obviously disagreed, but couldn’t force him to participate. He was neutralized and his partner took over the project."