Chapter Nine: To Manipulate Time

He should have realized this trip would include so much talking, so much interaction, so many new and inquisitive eyeballs pulling over him. He was done with it. Too many people. Too much attention.

A brief reprieve came when they turned out the lights for the movie. The film began with a clip of the building’s exterior, and an enthusiastic male narrator saying, “The innovation, the enterprise, the magic of Speculative Science. Science that should be fiction.”

More images flashed by, smiling scientists in labs working together, celebrities touring the facilities, all while that same narrator explained Speculative Science’s history and some of their less impressive achievements.

From there, the movie got into the good stuff.

A man maybe a decade older than Cole approached the camera unsmiling. His hair was short, his hairline receding. His skin was a medium-brown. His mouth was set into a frown, the lines of which extended through the entirety of his face, pulling at his flesh until even his eyebrows drooped. Cole wondered if the guy had ever seen a good night’s sleep.

Behind the frowning man two dozen scientists walked around the perimeter of an enormous machine. The machine towered above them at a height of around thirty or so feet. It was topped with a metallic dome, dotted with glistening rivets. The sides of it had several small doors, only two of which were open. The others were shut tight. In the center of each door, there was a circular handle, like the type that would be found on a submarine.

“Time travel,” the man began, his voice flat and emotionless, not matching the bright lights and upbeat candor of the busy lab behind him. “It has intrigued humans since the moment it was first dreamed up. Time was once thought to be an abstract concept, but with Einstein’s theories of Spacetime and time dilation, we now see time in a new way. As much a part of the natural world as light or air, it can be manipulated, isolated, controlled. Through our research, we’ve discovered that time is not only affected by gravity and speed, but also by consciousness.”

The scene dropped away, replaced by an impressive graphic of spheres in different colors. The words ‘quarks’ ‘protons’ and ‘photons’ labeled the different balls. The man jumped into a brief explanation of quantum theory, something Cole knew a little about. There hadn’t been a lot to do in prison, and the library had been one of the few places he was safe. Nothing had helped him at night, but during the day, when he wasn’t in class or locked in his cell, he read in the library, and he read about everything. He recalled that quantum theory explained the universe at the smallest scale. Photons could act as both a wave and a particle. A photon behaved differently, depending on whether or not it was observed. Quarks could be found in the protons of atoms and quarks were able to pop in and out of existence randomly.

“The link between consciousness and the physical world,” the scientist went on, “is proven in how photons change their behavior under observation. Now, we’ve found the way to harness that link, and we believe that we can use it to manipulate time. All we need are two participants willing to risk everything. The more the prospective time travelers want it, the more likely the time travel is to succeed.”

Cole’s head spun as the video played out, going through more of the science, more of the possibilities. Speculative Science wanted to attempt time travel, but it was risky. Like a quark, a time traveler might very well pop right out of existence.

The video ended with the entire Speculative Science team standing in front of the domed machine again, all of them smiling, save for the man who’d done the majority of the explaining. He stood to the left, his arms folded behind his back, frowning.

A young woman spoke to the camera now. She grinned, clasping her hands together in front of her and speaking directly to the camera. “Time travel comes with some risks. All great leaps of science do. Marie Curie was killed by her own discoveries. And how many other scientists have been injured or killed in the name of science? We won’t pretend it’s all adventure and rainbows. It’s not. The chances of survival are not known. We can not measure the risk. We assume the risk is quite significant. It could take us some time to find volunteers. When we do find them, they must be wholly committed. They must have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Is that you?” She tilted her head and smiled, pointing at the camera. The team behind her waved, all except for that frowning guy, and the clip ended.

Cole straightened in his seat as the lights flicked back on. Anxious eyes flitted over to him. He could see the way they appraised him. They were trying to see if the video had scared him off.

“Now then,” Judy said, standing at the far end of the table. “What did you two think of our presentation? Thoughts? Questions?”

Ingrid set down her plate and looked around at the team. Cole noticed the way her lips tightened up, pulling together in the same little pursed sneer she’d directed at him in Scott’s car. “The video says you can’t measure the risk,” she said. “I’m just wondering how big you think it is. Is it like fifty-fifty? Or are our chances of death bigger than that?”

“If they were bigger, would you still want to do this?”

Ingrid’s lips moved slowly up and down, like she was chewing on the inside of her mouth. She released her lips with a muffled popping sound. “I’m not sure.”

A man to the left of Cole cleared his throat. Cole’s eyes darted over to him. He was probably in his early forties, with dark brown hair and bushy beard. He settled back in his chair and studied Ingrid. “Let me ask you this,” he said. “What makes you want to do this experiment?”

“I don’t know. I guess, I feel like everything’s over for me. I screwed it all up and I don’t know how to bounce back. I have…done a lot of mean things. I want a new beginning. I want to get away from who I am.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the man spoke again.

“Maybe your career won’t ever bounce back, but there are other things in your life you’ll miss, no? Your family? Your friends?”

Ingrid shook her head, her full bangs moving against her pale forehead. “I’m not close with anyone in my family, and friends…” She trailed off, staring blankly ahead. “I’m not great with friends. If I don’t get to do this, I’ll be crushed.”

Her words hung there for a moment.

Judy whispered something to one of the younger women, a strange smile lighting up her eyes.

Ingrid twisted a lock of brown hair and continued. “If the time travel kills me, it’s not like I’ll know I died. I get to die thinking I’m getting a second chance. It’s a win-win either way.”

“That’s the spirit!” Ashley chirped.

“Very good,” Judy agreed. She stood up straighter, now setting her sights on Cole. Every set of eyes in the room followed suit.

Cole’s heart sped up, his skin tightening under the burn of their collective stares.

“And your thoughts, Cole?” Judy prompted.

He didn’t plan his words. They simply sprang out of him. “What about time paradoxes?”

Some uneasy glances were exchanged among the Speculative Science team members.

Judy spoke with an apologetic frown on her face. “We aren’t sure. This is where our team is split. Some believe in the ‘river with many branches’ theory of time travel. If you go back in time, you’ll be not entering, but forming, a completely new timeline. Ashley, Stefanos, and Jessica are the biggest proponents of this theory. It’s the many worlds theory. If that is the case, then paradoxes are not possible. If we send you back in time, you can’t affect this version of reality, because you will no longer be in this version of reality.”

“Wait,” Ingrid snapped. “Then how will you check to see if it worked? Isn’t that the point of sending us back to sometime after 1950?”

“Ay, there’s the rub,” a man across the table groaned.

“You ask a valid question,” Judy admitted. “If that theory proves to be correct, we’ll have to rely on our back-up plan.”

“Which is?” Ingrid’s tone was accusatory and direct. Cole couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. Here she was in a room full of accomplished scientists, people who could give her a new life, an escape from whatever awful deed she’d done, and she was grilling them as if she had every right to.

The bearded man spoke again. “We believe we’ve invented something that might be able to communicate between parallel worlds…for a short time.”

“And after that?”

“After that? After that you’re on your own. This is the point of sending two people. If the world you enter is vastly different than this one, you will have to rely on each other.”

Cole gathered his courage and spoke again, wincing as he heard the warble in his words. “Not everyone here believes in the many worlds theory, right? What are the other options?”

“Some of us think there might be the chance of time paradoxes,” the young woman beside Ingrid piped up. “But we don’t think you guys will be able to do much damage. We’re willing to risk it. Then there are the ‘movie reel’ time travel dudes. There’s some overlap here with the ‘many worlds’ crowd. They think you can’t alter time, even if you wanted to, because all of time has already happened, but is, at the same time, happening.”

“Happening and already happened,” Cole repeated numbly.

“Yep. Time is a movie reel. All of the scenes in the movie are in the reel. In a sense, they’re all happening. But then, they’ve all already been filmed. You can only progress through time in a linear way. That doesn’t mean time itself is linear.”

“That sounds awful,” Ingrid said. “It’s so fatalistic. If everything already happened, that really takes the meaning out of life.”

Judy shrugged. “Not really. Doesn’t mean you didn’t make any choices. Just that you already made them. It’s cool if you think about it. You both haven’t been born yet and already died all at once.”

Ingrid crossed one leg over the other. She tapped her heel and a silver ankle bracelet jangled with each frenetic little movement. “Weird,” Ingrid muttered. “Weird, weird, weird.”

“Sounds like you guys don’t know much about time travel,” Cole said quietly. “You don’t know if we stick with this reality, make our own, or go into a new one.”

“That is true,” Judy agreed with a nod. “We have a lot to learn still. Are either of you rethinking this? Do you want to back out? Don’t be afraid to tell us if you are. This is a big ask and a big risk. Better to tell us as soon as possible, so that we can move forward with the search process and find the people who will be the right fit.”

Cole glanced over at Ingrid. He was sure she was going to call it quits. Briefly, their eyes locked.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she announced, eyes locked onto his. “I have my heart set on this.”

His gut clenched. Her eyes were so green, looking right into his. His neck snapped down. He looked at his lap as he spoke. “I’m still in.”

There was a brief silence and then the sound of a foot tapping against the commercial carpet.

“Very well,” Judy said. “We’re ready to move forward with the first of the screenings. Cole?”

“Yeah?”

Judy didn’t say anything until Cole forced himself to look up at her. His cheeks burned as he tried to ignore all the sets of eyes watching him, judging him.

“Would you like to be the first to test with the emotometer?”

Cole nodded. “Why not?”

And for the first time since he’d arrived in this strange place, he felt a tremor of excitement once again. He rose from his chair and followed Judy to the door of the conference room, dumping his plate of uneaten food in the trash as he went.

His blood thumped in his veins, running the gamut from searing hot to icy cold. He had to pass this test. He had to want it.

He did want this. He did.