Time Slip (2 page)

Dr. Montgomery “Monty” Merriweather walked in through the solid and very plain public entrance door. The reception room was equally utilitarian, with a single desk void of any work and one secretarial chair behind it, a warehouse tag hung from its side announcing its lack of use or its recent purchase. Dr. Ron’s reputation for utility over form was legendary in the University circles. Unlike most male professors, he would never have had a pretty female student assisting him, unless she happened to also be the smartest in her class. So Monty expected to be processed by someone resembling an elderly librarian in a lab coat, gray hair in a bun, angry eyes glaring through wire-rimmed glasses perched on a crooked nose. He smiled at the thought. There was no one here. No one at all.

He had never been
here
before, which seemed ironic because he had contributed to the collider’s design—a pretty central piece, in fact. Monty wasn’t put off by this though, as he knew his friend simply relished the secrecy and promised him a full show of the collider when it was ready. Of course, that had been years ago. Then last night, out of the blue, he got a phone call from his friend, who he hadn’t talked to in months, pleading with him to come down to the lab and help him with some tests on the new collider. Luckily the timing was perfect, as Monty’s schedule was pretty empty until his next design contract started in a week, followed by one class, MECH3305 – Computer-Aided Engineering Design, which he taught in the fall.

He probably should have been pissed to have been kept in the dark all this time, or should not have said “yes” so quickly to Dr. Ron’s pleas, but this was how his friend operated. And to be angry at his behavior would have been just as silly as being angry with the sun for not rising an hour earlier because you wanted it that way.

He heard music in the laboratory.

“So Dr. Stoneridge says it’s okay to come in? Wonderful! Thank you!” Monty said effusively to the empty desk and pushed through one of the two doors that led into the lab.

Paul McCartney belted out
Can’t Buy Me Love
but the reverb seemed exaggerated, most likely because of the room’s enormous size. He stepped onto a metal grate walkway and gawked at the giant space. He was standing on a ten-foot-wide mezzanine surrounding a cavernous sunken laboratory, close to a football field in length. He continued to the railing, noting his position was near what he’d call the fifty-yard line, and looked down.

“Wow!” There it was: Dr. Ron’s collider. It was a thing of beauty. A giant metal tube ran the length of the entire building, with an opening near the center, like some high-tech drain pipe that had been separated in the middle. Monty noticed its curvature as the tube vanished through the walls at each end. Even though the circumference was smaller than that of most non-linear particle colliders, it was still impressive when one stood over it.

He noticed that Dr. Ron was sitting at a computer workstation directly in front of the cut-out, looking up at him. “Monty,” he hollered after the song concluded, “are you going to just stand there, or are you coming down to help me?”

“Be right down,” Monty yelled back and trotted down the stairs as John and Paul sang
Any Time At All
at the tops of their lungs.

“You’re kidding… Right?” Monty looked at his friend with a smile, sure he was the recipient of some elaborate practical joke. Dr. Ron described what had transpired since they last saw each other, not leaving much out. Then, on the third aromatic cup of coffee from the Keurig, he got around to explaining the results of his first test, omitting his suppositions and assumptions, and launched right into the results of the second test. He never told Monty about the third time he opened the doorway and saw himself.

Monty’s demeanor never changed through the entire story, as if he were waiting for the punchline of a long joke, until he looked at the data—and then he saw the facts.

“You actually created a stable vortex?”

“I didn’t say that. It lasts for only”—he pointed to a notation on one of the loose pages of notes strewn on the work table—“9.99 seconds, repeating.”

“So tell me why you’re sure this isn’t a window to the past?” Monty asked. His mind, like every philosopher or sci-fi theorist, wondered about the possibilities.

“I don’t believe it’s possible to go to the past. Not only is it not supported by any of our current theories; I believe it’s impossible because of the paradoxes we have all posited with backward time travel. Such as, if you went back in time and met yourself, what would happen to the two of you who occupy the same space?”

“Or my favorite,” Monty added, “if the future-you killed your father, how could you have been born to do the killing?”

“Exactly!” Dr. Ron held up his index finger. “This is a paradox that cannot be resolved. For all these reasons, I believe you can only travel forward.”

“Still, this is amazing. Why haven’t I heard about this?” Monty looked around, and then thought of the empty reception area. The words leapt out of his mouth, “You haven’t told anyone yet… so why me?”

“Betsy is my usual assistant, but she’s at home…” He paused and tightened up, putting on an emotionless mask. “…sick, and I want someone I trust on this who isn’t my wife to verify the results before I publish. So, will you help me run the next test?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Monty’s gaze followed his friend to the computer station, where without hesitation, he tapped the computer keyboard’s Enter key and the machine hummed to life in response.

“That’s what I thought,” Dr. Ron said with a smile.

“Based on what Einstein postulated this must take a ton of power, far more than just what the accelerator requires.” Monty shot a look up to the ceiling’s giant power cables. His eyes closed for just a second, enough time to do the mental calculations. “How the hell did you get the okay to pull power from the grid?”

“I didn’t.”

Simon Ransacker punched the number on his desk phone, and heard it ringing on the other end. He waited for an answer, impatiently gnawing on his cigar.

The other end picked up, and the recording began playing immediately. “Thank you for calling the laboratory of Stoneridge Research. If you’re calling during laboratory hours, we are busy changing the world. Please leave a message—”

He slammed the phone down, severing the connection.

For the fourth time in as many days, the Dallas-Fort Worth grid had almost gone down. The first two times occurred the morning of the 5
^th
, and the third in the wee hours of the 7
^th
, and those had been somewhat of a mystery. Earlier today, his team traced these to the University of Texas and some research being done there. They had received the okay from ERCOT for a one-time draw from the grid, but the other one on the 5
^th
and the one two days later were unsanctioned. Plus, they certainly had underestimated their power usage in their waiver proposal. Then, twelve hours ago, another power drain, worse than the other three, pulled over 50% of the entire grid’s power. This time his team had a name to pin on the guilty party: Dr. Ronald Stoneridge. And this time Stoneridge had gone too far. It was one thing to exceed the limit during a research project and extend the research past the end-time specified on the waiver. It was another to blatantly break the law, like that jerk just did. “And on one of the hottest days of the summer… That just chaps my hide.” He threw his half-chewed cigar against the wall.

Now that he knew who the culprit was, he wanted to confront him before going to the authorities. He wanted to know what this Dr. Stoneridge was doing with all this power. More important now, he had to stop him from taking any more before the stupid bastard brought the entire Dallas-Fort Worth grid down.

“You are in for a shit-storm now, my friend,” Ransacker grinned while banging in the phone number of the person who would bring this shit-storm down on top of Dr. Stoneridge.

“Ransacker? That you?” yelled the voice on the other end.

“Sir, we have a 52% power drain caused by some crazy scientist at UT who doesn’t have waivers. Do I have your authority to call the DPD Chief and cut him off before he brings the grid down?”

“Sonofabitch! Are you sure Ransacker?”

“Yes, sir. I’m 100% sure.”

“Who is it?”

“A Doctor Ronald Stoneridge from Stoneridge Research.”

A long silence was broken by the sound of the phone on the other end being dropped.

“Sir, are you all right?”

“Eh, yah, I’m here. Better give me the details then. I’ll make the call. Good work, Ransacker.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes.” The man who had no name answered his cell and lowered the volume of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor so he could hear better.

“I need you to speed up the job,” said a hurried voice filled with nervous energy.

“When?”

“Tonight!”

“My price just doubled, then.” The man tossed that out immediately.

The other person hesitated for just a moment. “Money’s no object. Just get it done.”

“The doctor will be removed tonight, then.”

“And the data from his computers?”

“As agreed.”

“Fine. Just be sure—”

The man ended the conversation with a click and tossed his phone onto his bedside table.

“Continue, but be quick. I have to work tonight,” he told the prostitute, who smiled at him, and then fixed her gaze downward and hurriedly unzipped his pants.

The man responded with an extra measure of pressure on the remote’s volume up button. The sonorous voices of the choir filled every space of his hotel room. They reached climax with their “Amen”, just before he did.

“You want to do what?” Monty bellowed almost hysterically. Dr. Ron and he had just completed their analysis of the drone’s data. It operated perfectly and sent back almost a terabyte of data. After seeing the portal in person and reviewing the data, it seemed conclusive enough: they really could generate a time portal, or what Dr. Ron referred to as a time slip to the future. That’s when Dr. Ron told Monty his immediate plans to go forward in time to save his Betsy.

“We’re going to send me forward in time by five years. Then you’re going to send another drone forward in approximately three months, and maybe one more—assuming you have time—another three months after that. With a little luck, one of those two times, I will find a way to get you the information Betsy’s physician will need.”

“You mean a cure for her cancer?”

“Yes.”

“Aside from the obvious moral problems with what you are asking me to do, how do you expect to come back?” As soon as Monty asked this, he realized the answer: his friend wasn’t coming back.

“You know this is a one-way trip since we established that you can only move forward in time.”

“So, all of this about needing someone to provide testimony before you publish your paper is crap, isn’t it? You just need me to be your messenger boy, to communicate with your brother-in-law for you.”

“You know it’s more than that.” Ron’s voice rose as desperation set in; without Monty’s help, the plan wouldn’t work. “Yes, this is the real reason I asked you to join me in these experiments. I not only needed someone I could trust, I needed someone to send in the probes, and…”

“…deal with the consequences, like the police, who you said would probably be coming soon to shut this down?”

“Monty, I am really sorry to throw this on you, but I have no other choice. And if I have to—”

“Dammit Ron, don’t even say it or you’re going to piss me off more than I already am. I know you know me well enough. So regardless of what I say, you’re going to jump through, knowing that I’ll be forced to help you or your jump will be for nothing and I will be in some way responsible for your wife’s death.”

The two men sat in silence, looking at the work table, covered with printouts and their pages of notes.

“So how do you know this will work?”

Dr. Ron considered divulging the images he had seen of himself earlier, images he had removed from the data he had shown Monty, but decided against it. Monty was already on board. They needed to take the next step.

“Because it has to,” he finally answered.

Dr. Ron pressed “Enter” and the machine came to life for a fifth time, humming through a precise warmup cycle, surging from a thump-thump-thump beat into a mighty rumble. It sounded to him like some massive primeval lion whose morning yawn gradually increased in cadence until it became a thunderous roar. His own heartbeat followed in sync to the rhythm of the collider, waiting for the machine to reach its apex. When his heart was practically leaping out of his chest, the doorway into another time opened, and without hesitation, he stepped into it.

“Amazing” fell from his lips, an unheard whisper not because of loud noises but a complete absence of sound immediately upon entering the slip. Little pins of brightness surrounded and accelerated toward him, slowly at first and then speeding up. After a few moments, thousands of pins were rushing at him from all directions. Then his world was awash in millions of white laser beams—pins of light with long tails, a glittering spectral blast of luminescence. It reminded him of the sparkling diamond-like glitter of a seascape at sunset, but a thousand times that and all at once. There was so much brightness he had to shield his eyes.
Should have worn sunglasses
, he thought. It wasn’t like he could use this information again: it was a one-way trip into the future.

An enormous flash erupted everywhere at once: a brightness that would have put a lightning strike to shame. Then, for just a moment, it was completely black, an absolute absence of light. If it were possible, it was as if every atom of light was being sucked out of the world around him.
Am I actually witnessing the infamous dark matter?
His thoughts carried no further before his stomach turned and ended up in his throat as weightlessness consumed him, like on the Racer, a roller coaster at Kings Island from his childhood memories. Even though he had almost puked each time, he loved it so much that he had ridden the damn thing twenty-seven times.