petermaize

The Jubilee Machine, Pt. III

   Badri Singh was reviewing the latest slew of questions from the Senate Select Committee on Security when Jeremy barged into the room. The young dynamo was nearly bubbling over as he slammed the office door and slid into a chair. His left knee was jiggling rapidly up and down as he announced the news.

“We found our first epistle.”

Epistle was the term that Badri’s team had adopted for messages from time travelers. Numerous locations had been selected around the world where time travelers could deposit dispatches to the future. It had been obvious that as soon as the team agreed on the locations for the epistles, they would already be there—assuming that their time travel project was successful.   Badri remembered the air of giddy amusement when the team decided on the first three locations. The moment the locations were agreed upon, he grinned and announced, “Okay, let’s go get ‘em!” knowing that epistles should already be there waiting to be found.

For simplicity, one of the locations was behind the football practice field, four feet underground. Eager young scientists ran out into the cold morning air and hacked away at the ground. But there was no epistle. The same was true when they searched in the moors of England. They found nothing. Each location they had chosen as an epistle site remained barren of messages. That could only mean one of two things: either the experiment was a failure, and every time traveler would be destroyed by the CTC, or it was proof that the alternate set theory was valid.

James and the alternate set theorists believed that any incursion into the past created an alternate universe. At the moment of incursion, the two universes would be identical, but they would also be distinct. So messages planted by time travelers could be discovered, but not by the version of the universe they had left from.

James loved these esoteric concepts, as did most of the team. They were discovering the rules as they went— ‘like finding out how gravity works for the first time’ as Badri liked to say. But this particular theory presented a distinct problem for any time traveler: you could go back in time, but you couldn’t report back what you’d seen. At least not to the same version of the universe that you’d left.

That’s the way it seemed until Jeremy burst into Badri’s office. Knee jiggling, eyes wide and vibrant, he waited for Badri to respond. The veteran scientist put down his forms and raised one eyebrow.

“And?”

“It’s from you,” Jeremy replied.

Badri leaned back in his big leather chair. He hadn’t expected that.

“From me?”

“Yep.” Jeremy said, knee still jiggling.

“Where was it located?”

“Jerusalem.”

Jeremy stopped jiggling. Badri sat motionless in his chair. The sound of a lawnmower permeated the large, ancient windows of his office. Badri Singh stated the obvious.

“But I’ve never been there.”

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Benton stared up at the stars. The night sky was ablaze with tiny chips of light. Even when he’d gone camping as a boy, Benton couldn’t remember seeing as many stars as this. He could understand how ancient civilizations would believe that their gods lived up there, in the shining, unreachable firmament.

The night was cold, but he didn’t want to build a fire. Not until he had a better idea where he was. In a way, it was scarier being alone in the middle of nowhere than to be a stranger in a foreign town. Benton felt exposed, vulnerable. As he sat cross-legged in the dirt he gripped his pistol for reassurance. If anyone tried to sneak up on him, boy would they get a surprise.

Benton scanned the sky for Orion and the North Star. He wanted to figure out exactly where he was, and when he was. With a little help from his portable pocket sextant he should be able to pinpoint his location in time and space with reasonable accuracy.

Benton had been unnerved when the caravan had crossed his path a few hours earlier. He’d been able to stay out of sight, so he wasn’t worried that he’d been spotted. What concerned Benton was the dress and language of the travelers. The five men who trudged along next to their camels were dressed in brightly colored robes with turbans and curved swords. They were definitely not speaking Aramaic, or any of the other ancient Near Eastern languages he had been exposed to. They didn’t look the way they were supposed to; they didn’t sound the way they were supposed to. Maybe Benton was in the wrong place.

The sextant was really too small to work effectively, but Benton didn’t have much choice. Every item he carried was valuable: his gun, gold for bartering, simple instruments, and the calculator that would let him find the loop that would carry him back to the future. In order to get their travelers home, the decelerator was programmed to run on an ‘empty’ cycle at regular intervals in the times/spaces that the travelers were operating in. It was analogous to sending an empty chair around a ski lift every once in awhile, so a traveler who was in the right position would be picked up. It had never been tested in reality, but in theory there should be no problem—if the traveler was in the right position.

Benton lined up the sextant. He scanned the western night sky for the North Star. Got it. Now, Orion would be a few degrees lower on the horizon. He moved the sextant

to the left, and it was…not there. Nowhere near. Benton checked to see where he’d made a mistake, went through the steps again. And again. The constellations were all in the wrong place. A chill swept over him. He was not just in the wrong year. He was off by centuries, and the stars were so far off that he couldn’t even figure out where he was…and…

Benton began breathing hard. Take it easy. We knew this was a possibility.

 

It took another hour, but Benton eventually determined he was at approximately 40 degrees longitude and 25 degrees latitude. With his calculator he figured out that the sky he was looking at existed in the northern hemisphere in the late 3rd century AD.

Benton was dumbstruck. He was irretrievably lost; so far away from his target position, in both time and space that a loop would never come around. He would never get back.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Ellen tapped on the open door, but Badri didn’t look up. She knocked again, louder. The gray-haired physicist with the prizefighter’s build and John Lennon glasses looked up.

“Ellen.”

“Hi, Badri. You got a minute?”

Badri sat up and logged off his computer. “Sure.” He could guess what was coming. Benton had been gone for eleven days, and there were no indications that he had left any epistles, or any traces of his existence in another time. Nothing had come down to them, and Benton didn’t appear to have taken a loop back from Egypt. To Ellen, it looked like he was gone—the experiment was a fatal failure.

Ellen sat down. She was calm, unemotional. All of them knew this was a possibility—even a likelihood in these pioneering days. But Ellen needed to talk, to get some closure.

“Doesn’t look like Benton left any clues for us, does it?” she said, then conjured up a small smile. “Maybe he’s having too good a time in Egypt. But you’d think he’d at least have left a ‘wish you were here’ card somewhere.”

Badri smiled and leaned forward on his elbows amidst the papers and folders, but said nothing.

Ellen continued. “I mean, I never expected him to pop up two days later and say, ‘hey, I just spent three years in Alexandria!’ And if the alternate set theory is correct, he’s not coming back to this universe at all.”

“I didn’t think you believed in alternate set,” Badri replied.

Ellen looked out the window. Badri had a nice view of the university common and the old administration building.

“I’m open on the subject. I guess all of us in a way are hoping it’s not true. If it is, we’ll never know if these stupid jumps work or not. Or at least, we’ll never be able to tell anyone in this universe that it works.”

Badri got up from his chair, stretching as his body adjusted to the new posture after three hours in a chair. He walked around and stood next to Ellen. Badri placed his hand gently on her shoulder.

“Ellen, Benton came back. He’s alive.”

Ellen gasped. She couldn’t speak as she processed Badri’s words. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was taut as he paused to let the statement sink in.

“But, but…well, he’s in bad shape. He was stranded in Persia 18 centuries ago and went through hell.” Badri shook his head, partly in astonishment, partly in sadness. “Somehow he created a loop that would work, but he returned to the early 90’s, half crazy and yammering about time travel and the future. He’s been institutionalized for the past two decades. He’s getting worse. Benton’s health and mind are both failing. He’ll never recover.”

Ellen was shaking her head. “When did you find this out? Did you know even before you sent him? Did he know what was waiting for him?” Her face flushed.

Badri chose his words carefully.

“We’ve been running checks ever since we chose all of you to be on the team. In all cases, there have been no abnormalities—no traces of any of you existing in any other time frame, leaving epistles or clues of any sort. It was really just a pro forma exercise. But I got a call two weeks ago from an institution in Illinois. Why they just now put the name together with the national identity search, I’m not sure. Benton’s been there a long time, so I imagine that years ago they diagnosed him as delusional, and none of the individuals he told them about ever turned up when the institution checked out his story. Of course not, since we all were young when Benton first returned. I was living in India, and the rest of you were children. The existence of the Cassandra project has never been acknowledged. You can imagine a raging, deformed middle-aged man mumbling about time travel…” He stopped.

Badri took his hand off Ellen’s arm.

“I went to visit him the day before he took the jump. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? As much as we’ve been dealing with these concepts, my mind is still overwhelmed by the mere idea that I could be meeting a 45-year old man whom the very day before I had been conversing with as a 25-year old. And they were both living in the same time, a few hundred miles from each other.”

Badri paused for a moment and looked down, as if debating what he should say next.

“That’s why I wasn’t at the jump. I raced over to see Benton. I was prepared to cancel the jump—hell, cancel the project—depending on what he told me. Of all the things he said, the one thing he was most certain of is that I should not cancel the jump. I had been prepared to do so, although with the realization that preventing Benton from jumping would not help the troubled and wounded man I saw in the asylum.”

“But why on earth would he persuade you not to cancel the jump?”

“Perhaps you should ask him yourself,” Badri said softly.

Ellen looked at him, then gazed out the huge window at the students walking on their way to class.

“I want to see him,” she said, standing up.

“I figured you would,” Badri said, withdrawing a slip of paper from his coat pocket.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Ken stepped out of the shadows by the Student Union.

“Badri, is that you?” he said softly.

Badri Singh walked briskly toward him down the wide, landscaped sidewalk. His teeth gleamed in the lamplight as he smiled a greeting to his young colleague. Badri extended his hand, which Ken thought was an odd thing to do. Ken shook it briefly.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Badri said softly. “We can talk while we walk.” The two men turned and headed for the Electromagnetic Research building a few hundred meters away. A university patrol car slowed down as it approached from the Engineering complex. Recognizing Badri, the security team moved on down the silent street.

“I know this seems very conspiratorial, having to meet at midnight on a secret rendezvous. But I need your help to keep the program on course.”

“What’s up, Badri?” Ken asked. He’d been surprised, and a little flattered, to receive a late night phone call from the project leader, requesting an urgent, clandestine meeting. Ken admired Badri for his intellect, tenacity and devotion. If he needed help, Ken was happy to oblige.

“Let’s go to the decelerator room. This concerns the very core of our project,” Badri said ominously.

Security was perplexingly low after business hours at the Cassandra project. During the day, security was airtight, as the facility buzzed with technicians and researchers, all unaware that they were focusing immense amounts of time on theoretical minutiae while a group of 7 cowboys was already beginning to explore the parameters of time travel. Badri and Ken passed a lone, sleepy guard as they went through the security scans in the foyer of the building. Once they had been authorized, the two men walked into the main research room, where only a few lights shone, accompanied by the low hum of equipment. Another set of security barriers occupied them for a few seconds, then Badri and Ken were alone in the decelerator room. Badri turned to Ken, his face suddenly grim.

“Someone has been using the decelerator, Ken. I’m not sure when it started, or how many jumps have been made. But I have to make it stop.”

“That’s impossible!” Ken exclaimed. Badri didn’t respond, just stared at him. Ken wondered how Badri knew. And more importantly, he wondered how anyone had been able to pull it off. Only one person—Benton—had ever been authorized to make a jump. Now Badri was saying that someone else had also been using the decelerator clandestinely. But they would require an accomplice. Because the team was so small, the options were very limited.

“Who do you think it is?” Ken asked.

Badri turned his head and gazed at the empty CTC. In the dim light it looked like a submersible that oceanographers used. He was still gazing at the sphere when he responded to Ken, “I can’t tell you that.”

Ken’s instincts quivered, sensing deception.

“Badri, there are only a few of us. Benton has already jumped, and there’s no indication when…or if…he’ll be back. Other than you, that just leaves me, Jeremy, Ellen and Antoine.”

He didn’t bother mentioning James, because everyone knew James wouldn’t step inside the decelerator for all the treasure in the world.

“Ken, I am asking for your trust.” Badri suddenly assumed the forceful, uncompromising persona that he only used in critical situations. “I am head of this project, and the project is in jeopardy. One of your colleagues has put everyone, including you, in danger. I am going to go find out what’s happening, and I’m going to make it stop.”

“How?” Ken demanded.

“I will need to make a jump. The details are not necessary at this point.”

Ken shouted, “Wait a minute! You think I’m going to send you back in time because you say ‘trust me’? You’re not giving me enough information, Badri, I….”

“Do as I say!” Badri shouted. “Damn it, Ken, I’m about to risk my life to save this program. The least you can do is help me make the jump!”

Badri was standing at the controls of the decelerator, copying in data from a piece of paper in his hand. Ken watched him for a moment, letting the drama abate somewhat, and trying to grasp what was going on. Finally he spoke.

“Badri, I cannot assist you if I don’t know what you’re doing and where you’re going. So the project leader disappears? Do you think the Cassandra team, Dr. Mellon and the others, won’t be wondering what happened to good old Badri Singh when you haven’t shown up for a few days? They’ll learn that I was the last person to be seen with you; they’ll know that I was with you when you disappeared. They’ll know you used the decelerator. What do I tell them, Badri?”

Badri looked up from his piece of paper. His dark eyes flashed. Badri Singh was an imposing man. A former boxer, he still had a powerful build, even after years of inactivity. His closely-cropped head glistened.

“You will give them this.”

Badri extended the sheet of paper, and Ken stepped forward to take it. Most of the sheet was filled with numbers. Ken knew what they were for. At the bottom of the page Badri had written:

‘I have used the decelerator to make a jump because I deemed it to be in the best interests of the project and the lives of those involved. Destination: Jerusalem, 1850 C.E. I bear full responsibility.’

Badri had signed his name below that in large, smooth loops.

“Now help me,” Badri commanded.

Badri ran Ken through the sequence, which was surprisingly easy.

“…and then you’ll see the decelerator kick in, and the sine waves will start to align. The speed is an approximation, but once you see these numbers stabilize around 13,” he pointed to one of the LED readouts, “then you’ll have a window of about 30 seconds where it will remain steady. You need to act during that window, before any fluctuations can set in. I won’t be able to hear you. Just press this little red button when you’re ready.”

The little red button. Both men smiled. Badri’s grin was intended to express gratitude and confidence. Ken’s was a nervous reaction.

Badri began unbuttoning his trench coat.

“Please remember to take this coat with you when you leave tonight. I’ve left something for you in the right pocket. Keep it secret unless it’s absolutely necessary, or in the event that you don’t hear from me.”

“What about the guard. He saw both of us…” Ken stopped when he saw what Badri was wearing. In front of him was a large Indian man dressed in an old-fashioned military uniform. Badri unfolded a turban from the trench coat pocket and placed it on his head. He looked like a character from Gunga Din.

“I’ll let you know how everything goes. Wish me luck.”

“Badri, please. This whole thing doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t understand your motives or what the danger is. I’m an unwitting participant in…”

Badri had already climbed in the decelerator, squeezing himself inside the sphere. Ken stood still for a moment, then sighed and closed the decelerator door. He stepped over to the control panel and initiated the sequence.

After Badri was gone, Ken made sure the decelerator was idling properly. He quietly exited back through the Cassandra main room, past the sleeping guard. As he left the building, the two other guards nodded to him.

“Night,” Ken said. He could see his breath in the cold night air.

“Goodnight, sir” one of the guards replied. No remark concerning the fact that two men went in the building and only one had come out.

Ken walked swiftly down University Boulevard, clutching the trench coat.