Time risk a time travel.., p.5
Time Risk: A Time Travel Novel, page 5
After more laughs, Donald put his attention back on Rachel. “All right, now, Rachel. Tell us three things about yourself, and then you and I will have our meeting, and I’ll answer any questions you may have.”
Rachel looked at them, baffled. Nothing and no one seemed anchored in any reality she’d ever experienced. She searched each of their faces, probing, wanting to peer beyond their jokey masks, and see them for who they truly were.
Finn said, “Come on, Rachel, give us three good descriptions about yourself.”
Rachel cleared her throat and said, “When I was a girl, I wanted to be an astronaut. My first boyfriend got busted by my off-duty-cop-father for trying to rob a convenience store, and I’m scared to death I’m going to die if I time travel.”
The four of them stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. In the silence, she heard the muted conversations of nearby scientists, the chatter of a computer keyboard, and the gentle hum of computers.
It was Mike, the former comedian, who broke the silence. “You’re a real barrel of laughs, Rachel. Hey, did you hear this one? What did the time traveler say to the time machine?”
Rachel shrugged a shoulder.
Mike’s eyes opened dramatically. “He says, don’t worry, I’ll be back... before I even left!”
Finn flicked a dismissive hand. “That joke is so…”
“…Timeless?” Hazel tossed in, with a bright grin.
“No,” Finn said. “Overused. I didn’t get it two years from now, and I still don’t get it.”
Again, they all fell into easy laughter, and Rachel forced a smile. She was ready to flee the place and return to the real world, four million dollars or not. She couldn’t imagine working with these people, trusting them or putting her life on the line, when to them, everything was a joke.
No wonder two time travelers were still missing, and another one was dead.
CHAPTER 9
Ten minutes later, Rachel was in Dr. Elsden’s simple, square office. There were no paintings on the walls, no bookshelves, and no family portraits. Rachel wondered if Dr. Elsden’s inner world was as sterile as his outer world.
He sat in a leather swivel chair behind his gray metal desk, while Rachel sat across from him in a metal desk chair. A window behind him framed a picturesque view of trees, a gray sky, and a glimpse of the pond she had noticed upon her arrival.
Rain began to fall, with large drops striking the window and streaking down the glass, which soon fogged up. As Dr. Elsden typed notes into his laptop, clouds descended, and the trees turned dark and swayed in the wind.
His notes completed, the doctor lowered the laptop lid, made a pyramid of his fingers, and gazed at Rachel over the tops of them. “It rains a lot around here. That’s the only downside. Mucho rain. I grew up in Southern California, and I loved to surf, lie in the sun, and drink beer.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and Rachel sensed a change of mood. When he opened his eyes, there was a serious glint in them. “Do you have any questions?”
Rachel jumped right in. “I presume you have my file, and you know all about me?”
“Not all…”
“Can I see the files on the three men who time traveled? And Mr. Whitlock mentioned his father’s extensive file. I’d like to see that, too.”
“I’m sure you’ll understand, Rachel, if I deny your request to view the three men’s files. Just as you wouldn’t want anyone to access your personal file, we must respect their privacy as well. As to David Whitlock’s file, I will certainly provide that. Additionally, we’ll also discuss, in detail, the history, the customs, and the language of 1941. As you can imagine, it was another world back there, without technology, social media, or cars with automatic transmissions. I hope you can drive a stick shift.”
Rachel knew how to drive a stick shift. She straightened, ready to confront him on his and his colleagues’ glib attitudes. “Do you and your staff take all this seriously?”
Dr. Elsten lowered his hands, placing them flat on the desktop. “Yes.”
“You don’t seem to. Any of you. I’m used to working with people who will take a bullet for you. I had a partner who did just that. He took two bullets for me and he’s dead. That’s why I’m here.”
Donald kept his eyes on her. “Yes, Rachel, I read about that. You and your partner, Jose Sanchez, went to an apartment looking for a murder suspect. It turned out the murder suspect was also a drug dealer. The door to the apartment opened, your partner saw the gun, stepped in front of you and took the two bullets.”
Rachel’s emotions were still raw, and her eyes darkened in profound despair. “Yeah, that’s about it.”
Donald continued. “You shot and killed the dealer, and you also shot and killed the man behind him, who didn’t have a gun, but who was working with the dealer, selling coke and fentanyl to white collar clients and teenagers, some of whom had overdosed. That second guy, who didn’t have the gun, just happened to be the only son of a United States Senator. The Senator had you busted. He threw money, influence, and lots of attorneys at you and you—”
Rachel cut in. “… I know what happened,” she said sharply. “That’s why I’m here. I need a job. I need money. I need a new life.”
Dr. Elsden leaned back. “Do you want to back out, Rachel?”
Rachel’s voice was edged. “I haven’t signed a contract, so I’ve never backed in. Frankly, you and your team don’t inspire confidence. Everything’s a joke to you people.”
Donald’s face was impassive. “We’ve lost two travelers, and, as you know, we lost a third, our most recent traveler, from a heart attack soon after he returned. The first and the third were respected and dear colleagues, brilliant scientists, who’d volunteered. Ever since our first colleague did not return, we have spent sleepless nights in anguish and self-recrimination, and we have spent long, agonizing days poring over calculations and running countless simulations, struggling to ascertain what went wrong. We have drunk copious amounts of booze, swallowed pills and cursed the fates. And, yes, maybe we’re guilty of telling stupid jokes now and then because, if we didn’t, we’d go crazy. We laugh and we try to forget our failures and our losses, so we can keep going. But we don’t forget the people we’ve lost, and we never will.”
Dr. Elsden inclined forward, his gaze fixed and hard. “But don’t be fooled, Rachel. If you decide to go… Well, we can’t take a bullet for you, but we will bring all our knowledge, education, experience, skills, and sick humor to the project. We’ll work like hell to keep you alive and make your time travel journey a success. Your success will be our success, and we want that more than you can ever imagine. Time travel has been a practical dream for us most of our lives, and we are hell-bent on making it a reality.”
Rachel thought about that, while Donald continued. “But you have to want to do this more than anything else—more than for just the money—and if you choose to time travel, a few bad jokes shouldn’t push you over the edge. If your resolve is that weak, then you’re not the person we want to work with, and you’re not the right person for this job.”
Rachel folded her hands in her lap and looked at him. “Tell me about the guy who wasn’t a scientist. I’m not a scientist either.”
“About a year ago, we were approached by a rather clever adventurer—a 32-year-old man—who begged us to allow him to travel back to 1930. He offered Mr. Whitlock $500,000, which he said he’d won in a lottery. Anyway, Andrew Whitlock gave his approval for the experiment, and we reluctantly sent the man. It was to be just a simple depart-and-return trip. The launch was successful, and he was the first to use our Temporal Beeper, which is a small, hand-held device about the size of an old Apple iPod. It confirmed that he had in fact arrived in 1930, but unfortunately, he never engaged it a second time to come home—or if he did, we didn’t receive his signal. And though we tried to signal him, our attempts failed. We haven’t heard from him, and he should have returned seven months ago.”
Rachel gave him a worried look. “So, you haven’t even had one success, except for the man who returned but then dropped dead of a heart attack?”
Donald hesitated as he searched for anything that might sound encouraging. “But before he died, he traveled to 1955, returned within two days of his return date, and provided a lot of information about the physical, mental and psychological experience of time travel. He also successfully used the Temporal Beeper, both to let us know he had arrived and to signal his desire to return. And if it’s any consolation, it appears that the heart attack was totally unrelated to the time travel.”
“But you don’t know that for sure, right?” Rachel asked.
Donald shook his head. “No. Nothing in life is for sure, Rachel. I think you know that. Didn’t some wise philosopher say, ‘From error to error we stumble upon some measure of illumination?’”
Rachel wasn’t so sure she liked this bit of wisdom, at least not in her current situation.
Donald continued. “Doesn’t being a homicide detective involve taking risks?”
“Calculated risks. Risks that I could control, for the most part.”
Dr. Elsden stood up and turned to the window, which was washed with rain. He pivoted back to her, conviction lighting up his eyes. “Rachel, we’ve had a couple of major breakthroughs in the last few months. Since we got the word from Mr. Whitlock about the possibility of a time traveler going back to 1941, we’ve performed a myriad of calculations. We’ve run innumerable simulations, and we’ve refined all our models. We’ve simplified them, and we’ve sharpened them. We’ve also physically tested them on a cat and a dog. In two separate experiments, we sent them back to December 1, 1941, and we successfully brought them back. We have learned much from our unsuccessful attempts, and we’ve greatly improved our fail-safes, in case something does go wrong.”
Rachel crossed her legs and sighed. “How do you know if the cat and dog actually went back to 1941? Did they tell you?”
He didn’t smile at her snide joke. “They had a chip embedded in their necks—not painful by the way—a very sophisticated tracking device that measured the day and year, as well as the longitude and latitude.”
“Will I receive one of those chips?” Rachel asked.
“No, our technology only allows the chip to transmit for a day or two before it loses integrity. However, we have refined and improved on the Temporal Beeper, and we feel certain it is reliable. You will, of course, take that with you.”
“Are the dog and cat still alive?” Rachel asked.
“Very much so. By the way, the dog, Rex, said he’d time travel again, in a heartbeat. The cat, Omar, said we should give him a week or two to think it over. And neither Rex nor Omar was paid a nickel.”
Rachel’s smile was small. “You said the adventurer didn’t have a specific mission. Did the two scientists have specific missions, as I have?”
“No, they were simply to land, observe, return, and provide scientific feedback. They weren’t to do anything specific or try to change anything.”
As Donald returned to his seat, Rachel rose, stepped behind her chair, and placed her hands on the top rail. “So, two of them are still out there somewhere, maybe dead, maybe struggling to survive, which means they might already have changed the past. Does that worry you?”
A smile hung on his lips.
CHAPTER 10
Dr. Elsden blinked, and Rachel waited for his answer.
“Yes, Rachel, I think about that. I’ve thought about this kind of thing for many years. It goes with the territory.”
Rachel kept her eyes on him. “I have another question that’s been kicking me in the gut ever since I spoke to Mr. Whitlock.”
“Ask away.”
“If I’m successful in saving David Whitlock, it will change history. Right? I mean, it’s pretty self-evident.”
“Yes… It could create a logical inconsistency. Resolving such issues often involves complex theories, such as branching timelines or the idea that the timeline adjusts itself to ensure consistency.”
Rachel continued. “In other words, the changed world will be some parallel world?”
“Possible, but not necessarily. As I just said, the timeline—that is, the new adjusted timeline with David Whitlock surviving instead of being killed—might then simply adjust itself, and no one in the future will be any the wiser.”
Rachel stared ahead, her mind exploring the crazy theories. “So, then, it’s possible that Mr. Andrew Whitlock won’t marry the same woman, and he may not become a billionaire whose money and obsession built and funded this lab. It’s then possible that in that other, adjusted world, this entire time travel laboratory could just go poof. True or false?”
“It is possible, yes.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
“As I’ve said, I think about it, and we’ve done the math, and our team has discussed it at great length. It fascinates us. It drives us. It excites us. It’s one more reason we want your time travel journey to be a success.”
Rachel laughed a little. “Success? Really? Because if I am successful, you may never get the chance to even build this lab or that time machine. You may be just another tenured professor teaching physics at, I don’t know, MIT or Princeton.”
Donald studied her. “Well, Rachel Hunt, you’re as bright and practical as your file says you are.”
Rachel returned to her chair and sat, her thoughts spinning. “And, for my own selfish purposes and for self-preservation’s sake, if there is no laboratory, then Rachel Hunt will have to remain in 1941, because she won’t be able to return, will she?”
Donald reached for a ballpoint pen and turned it in his hand. “There is one more possibility, Rachel.”
Her eyes snapped to his. “I’m all ears and beating heart.”
“You could go to 1941 as planned, but not attempt to find or save David Whitlock. Let’s say that you get there and signal your arrival with the Temporal Beeper. Then you look around a bit, spend a week or so, and engage the Temporal Beeper a second time. It sends us the right signal on one of our large screens, and we throw a switch, so to speak, and haul you back home to 2024. You will report to Mr. Andrew Whitlock that you did your absolute best, and still receive your four million dollars. We, here at the lab, will delight in our sterling success, and everyone will be as happy as happy can be. I believe it’s called a win-win.”
Rachel looked down at her jeans, smoothed out her fuchsia-colored top, and then gazed out the window for a time, watching the beads of rain wobble and then race down the glass. Slowly, her eyes returned to Dr. Elsden. “Well, aren’t you the clever and devious time travel scientist?”
He gave her a long, considered stare, and then shrugged. “It’s just another option, Rachel. It’s what I do. Physicists create models of reality, among other things, and so this is just another possible model. As I said, it’s a win-win option, and the risk is lowered for everyone concerned.”
Rachel rose again and paced the room, while Dr. Elsden watched her curiously.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Cleveland girl in me, whatever that means. Maybe it’s the cop in me who, as noble as it sounds, wanted to be an honest cop; a cop who did her job the best she could; a cop who wanted to make some kind of difference in the world, even if that difference was lame and—in the end—I guess it was lame.”
Rachel stopped in front of Dr. Elsden’s desk, staring at him pointedly. “No… If I decide to do this, then I’ll go for it, and do the job Mr. Whitlock is paying me for.”
They held each other’s stare, and then Rachel asked another question that had been brewing inside her.
“So, here’s my next question. Can I trust you and your team not to fling me off into some other time, so there is no possibility I can save David Whitlock, and, therefore, no possibility that this time travel lab, you, and the time machine will vanish?”
Donald drummed his fingers on the desktop. “If you’re willing to take the risk, Rachel, then so are we.”
Rachel scrutinized him. Did she believe him? Could she trust him?
Donald arched an eyebrow. “Rachel, there’s one more thing. When you reach December 1941, you’ll have an unparalleled advantage: knowledge of the future. You’ll be the most powerful person on the Earth in 1941, because you will know that six Japanese aircraft carriers will launch about 350 aircraft in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that will begin on the morning of December 7 at 7:55 a.m.”
Rachel nodded. “Yes… So, what are you saying, precisely?”
“Can we trust you not to contact the military and warn them? If you do, and they believe you, it will create a seismic shift in the space/time trajectory. It will rupture the fabric of time and change the world in ways we cannot even imagine. Not to sound too melodramatic, but it could even destroy the world. There is that slight possibility.”
Rachel eased back down into the chair. “Dr. Elsden… Donald. You must know that I’m not the slightest bit interested in taking on even more risk than I will already have. I have no inclination whatsoever to warn anyone about the attack. And, let’s face it, no one would believe me, anyway. They’d probably think I was a spy, or out of my mind, and toss me in jail. No, you can relax, Donald. That is not going to happen.”
Donald let out a slow breath. “Well, Rachel, as I’m sure you can imagine, the team has discussed all the ramifications of your time travel journey at great length, and that was one of our major concerns.”
Rachel kept her steady gaze still fixed on him. “Well then, you must have discussed this as well. Mr. Whitlock says he’ll be a rich man in any time and place. He says he’ll always be obsessed with time travel and he’s confident that even if I manage to save his father, it will not change his obsession with money and time travel. The time travel machine will be built, regardless. Do you believe him?”
