Zig Zag (28 page)

"A
broken glass on the floor," said Blanes, and laughter erupted
once more.

"Well,
yes, that's what happened the first hundred or so times we tried it,"
Marini admitted. "But that night in 2001 was different. We
managed to receive an image of the
unbroken
glass
on the table. And we had never filmed that image. Do you see what I'm
getting at? It came from the past. Specifically, from two hours
before we began filming ... Guys, that night we went out and got
blind drunk. I remember being in a pub in Zurich with David, three
sheets to the wind, when an equally drunk Swiss guy says to me, 'Why
so happy, friend?' 'Because the glass is unbroken,' I said. And the
guy says, 'Lucky you; I've already broken three tonight.'

"No
joke, that really happened," Blanes insisted as laughter rang
out in the small room. Even Valente, who was always so superior when
people made run-of-the-mill jokes (Elisa thought) seemed to think it
was hilarious.

"When
we showed that image to the people with the big bucks," Marini
continued, "jeez! Offers for financial backing started to flood
in ... Eagle Group took the reins and started construction on this
scientific station here on New Nelson. And, well, Colin will tell you
the rest." Colin Craig got up, and Marini took his seat. People
were still giggling and making comments. Nadja's face was flushed
from laughing so hard, and Mrs. Ross (who had unexpectedly gone into
hysterics with the tale of the man in the Zurich pub) was still
wiping tears from her cheeks. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed.

Still,
Elisa picked up on something.

Something
different, something incongruent.

She
thought she could see it in the glances that Marini, Blanes, and
Craig exchanged. It was as if they were thinking, "May as well
let them have fun for a little while."

Maybe
the rest won't be so enjoyable,
she
surmised.

"SO
I
was in charge of coordinating all the practicalities for the
project," Craig said. "In 2004, a dozen satellites were
secretly launched in geosynchronous orbit; that is, they were
programmed to rotate at a rate that matched the speed of the earth's
rotation on its axis. They were equipped with cameras that could
produce multispectral imagery at up to a half-meter resolution and
focus on a twelve-kilometer area. They could record telemetric
sequences of anyplace on the planet, using the coordinates received
from New Nelson. And those images are retransmitted to our station in
real time (which is why the project is called Zig Zag; the signal
boomerangs back and forth from the earth to the satellite and back to
the earth again), where they're processed by a twenty-two-bit
computer, isolating the geographic zone in question. Now, that's not
quite precise enough to allow us to count every hair on Sergio's
head..."

"But
it is on David's, since he's got so few left," Marini
interjected.

"Precisely.
In a word, we can see whatever we want, whenever we want, just like
military spy satellites. Let me give you an example." Craig
strode over to the computer console, gently pushing his wire-rimmed
glasses up on his nose as he did. Elisa thought he possessed such a
natural elegance that he could attend a reception at Buckingham
Palace in the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing right now without
attracting attention. He quickly typed something and the screen came
to life, showing a rough sketch of the Egyptian pyramids. In one
corner stood two mummies. Their faces had been covered with cutouts
from photos of Marini and Blanes. People giggled. "Let's suppose
we ask the satellites to capture a sequence of the Nile delta. They
do it, send it to us, and a computer processes it and obtains a
series of maps of the pyramids. After streaming the beam of electrons
through our synchrotron, we recover the recently formed particles,
and then another computer reconstructs them and captures the new
image. If we've used the right amount of energy, then we'll be able
to see the same place, the Egyptian pyramids, but, say, three
thousand years earlier... With a little luck, for a few seconds, we'd
be able to see a pyramid being built, or a pharaoh's burial
ceremony."

"Amazing,"
Elisa heard Nadja murmur, two seats to her left.

Marini
stood abruptly.

"Hey,
Colin, I think it's time to convince our audience that this isn't
just a pipe dream."

Craig
typed something into the console. A blurry but identifiable
image—pale rose, almost sepia in color, like an old
photo—appeared on the screen.

A
sudden hush overcame the room.

Elisa
felt a strange, ambiguous emotion; she wanted to laugh and cry at the
same time. Valente, sitting next to her, leaned forward with his
mouth open, like a little kid unwrapping the present he's been
dreaming of, the one he thought no one was going to give him.

The
photograph wasn't particularly interesting. It was just a close-up of
a glass, half full of water, sitting on a table.

"The
amazing thing about this image," said Marini calmly, "is
that
it
was never photographed.
We
extracted it from a twenty-second clip of the same table, but what we
filmed showed the glass broken on the floor two hours later. So what
you have before you is the
first
real
image of the past ever seen by the human eye."

Elisa's
eyes began to moisten with emotion.

That
was what science was, she thought.
True
science,
the kind that changes the course of history forever, was precisely
that: seeing an apple fall from a tree, and weeping.

Or
an unbroken glass sitting on a table.

IT
was
Reinhard Silberg's turn. When he planted himself in front of the
screen, he gave the impression (the
correct
impression,
Elisa thought) of being enormous. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and
cotton trousers with a leather belt, and was the only one there
wearing a tie, though it was loosened. Everything about him was
imposing, and maybe that's why he sometimes seemed to be trying to
lighten up, giving a smile that looked almost childlike on his
clean-shaven, pudgy, bespectacled face.

Right
then, however, he wasn't smiling. Elisa guessed the reason.
Maybe
he's the one who's here to give us the catch.
The
German scientific historian's first words made clear that she was
right.

"I'm
Reinhard Silberg, and I specialize in the philosophy of science. I
was recruited for Project Zig Zag as a consultant for all matters
that are not physics related, but are still of great importance."
He paused and moved a foot, as if he were tracing something on the
metal floor with a toe. "As you know, this project is top
secret. No one knows we're here. Not our colleagues, not our friends,
not our families, not even most of the managers at Eagle Group.
Naturally, we can't fool the scientific community, but with the
articles we've published and conferences we've put on, we've dangled
a few carrots. They know that the sequoia theory has potential, if
you'll pardon the expression, but not how potent it really is. This
project is one of a kind, at least up until now. We've been selected
after a rigorous study of our lives, hobbies, friends, and concerns.
We'll be working on something that no one has any prior experience
with. We're pioneers, and we need special security measures ... for
several reasons."

He
paused again and looked down at his foot, which was still jiggling.

"To
begin with, don't even
think
that
we'll be watching movies on this screen. When we go to the movies, we
see Caesar's murder, for instance, as if it had been filmed by a
home-movie buff straight from the time of the Roman Empire. But the
images we obtain from open time strings are not movies, not even
"true" or "real" films of the past: they
are
the
past. We can watch them on a screen like movies, record them onto DVD
like movies, but you must always remember that these are
open
time strings
that
we've extracted information from. When we see Caesar's murder it will
be
Caesar's
murder, just exactly as it happened and was recorded in the actual
particles of light reflected at the time, which is to say in the real
past. This gives rise to certain consequences. We don't know, for
example, what would happen with events or people who form part of our
culture, part of our ideals. Some secret studies have been carried
out, but they've been pretty inconclusive. For example, what would
happen if we saw Jesus Christ, or Muhammad, or Buddha? Just seeing
them and knowing, for certain, that it was actually them ... Not to
mention what could happen if we discovered aspects of their lives
that went against the teachings of the churches and creeds that claim
to follow these founders. What these churches have been making
millions of people—including several of us, most likely—
believe for centuries. Well, clearly, that's more than enough reason
for Project Zig Zag to be considered classified. But... there's also
another reason." He paused and blinked.

"I'd
like to explain it to you using another image. It's the only one
we've been able to obtain, with the exception of the Unbroken Glass.
Most of you don't even know it exists. Jacqueline, you're going to be
quite surprised ... Colin, would you?"

"Sure."

Craig
typed something else. This time the screening room lights went dim.
In the darkness, someone (Elisa thought it was Marini's voice) said,
"Fast forward through the ads, Reinhard." But this time, no
one laughed. Silberg began speaking, and his silhouette was visible
in the dim light emanating from the computer console.

"This
was obtained using the system that Colin just explained to you about
before. A satellite sent the images, we calculated the energy needed
to open the time strings and processed it..."

The
screen lit up. Washed out, reddish forms appeared.

"The
faded color is due to the fact that the 'past' end of the string is
located, in spatial terms, almost a million light-years away from us,
and it keeps getting farther," Silberg explained, "so it
fades to this reddish hue in the same way other celestial bodies do.
But this, in fact, comes from Earth..."

It
looked like a landscape. The camera was flying over a mountain range
that seemed approachable, almost diminutive, and had circular valleys
and spherical rocks between the mountains. The whole of it looked
like a great baker had frosted it with an enormous load of whipped
cream.

"My
God," said Jacqueline in a shaky voice.

Leaning
forward, Elisa uncrossed her legs. She felt weird. She couldn't put
her finger on what she felt, but she knew it was related to the image
she was seeing. It was like a shift toward uneasiness.

Something
vaguely threatening.

But
where was the threat coming from?