Time Slip (7 page)

Monty waited a second, maybe two, and then carefully craned his head up just past the console desk surface and saw the man running along the mezzanine railing toward the stairwell, which led down to him. Monty sprang up, yanked the portable drive out of the computer and dashed for Dr. Ron’s office.

It’s amazing
, he thought,
how slow you are when you have to run for your life
. It felt like his shoes were made of cement as he pumped his hands and feet toward the panel leading to safety—
if I could just make it
. Another
pffft
and a piece of concrete flooring skidded in front of him. He turned to see his aggressor bounding down the stairs while pointing his gun at him.
Run, Monty, run
, he goaded himself.

The Keurig exploded to his right, its days of delivering cups of flavored coffee ended. Monty pressed his palms forward and hit the panel hard. The door gave way instantly, and he pushed through.

Puff-clink-psssst
were the last sounds he heard over his pounding heart before he was pushing on the other side of the bookcase. Based on the sound and from the five-cent tour given earlier by Dr. Ron, he guessed that a propane tank was hit. He had to exit right away, before the whole place exploded.

Just then the lights went out. Monty once again was plunged into darkness inside Dr. Ron’s office. Remembering where the desk was, he banged into its side and pushed with all his strength, sliding it alongside the bookcase. He reached into a side drawer of the desk, hopeful the keys were still there where Dr. Ron had tossed them. “Bingo!” Monty now pushed the back end of the desk so that it would be resting lengthwise against the bookcase. Two books erupted out of the shelves, as if to say, “No, that won’t be enough.” Bits of plywood and plasterboard dust stung his skin.
He’s shooting at me from the opposite side
!

More shots popped through, as Monty leapt out of the back door and this time turned right. He ran along the back wall of the building, stopping at the gated exit surrounded by the dead electrical fence. Less than a minute later, Monty was pulling away from the compound when he heard the low boom of the explosion and saw just a small flash of orange light. It was a prelude to the sunrise that would come within an hour.

As he drove away, he knew he was fortunate and wouldn’t press his luck again. His wife and he were going to disappear.

Monty yelled up the stairs for a second time, pleading for his wife to get packed up and ready in less than five minutes. Not stopping, Monty trotted to his office, plugged in the portable drive, opened and froze the video feed of the message, and read in stunned silence. Then he mouthed, “No flipping way!” It was the first time he could really read the words on the message. After a second pass, he knew now what they had to do. Separating the message from the rest of the data, he created two images, printed them, and attached them to an email he sent to Dr. Valdez, Dr. Ron’s brother-in-law. He would have to call him on the way as well, sure that just an email wouldn’t be enough to convince him to do what the message said. He could hardly believe it himself.

After thinking for a moment, Monty burned a copy of all of the data and images onto a spare flash drive. This he sealed it in a bubble mailer, slapped on it a pre-paid label generated from a stamp program, and readied it to be sent in the mail to a colleague at MIT. Perhaps it was insurance, or maybe he just didn’t want this accomplishment to be lost.

His next action he had thought out when he had raced home. Although not sure it would work, it was the best he could do in the time he had remaining. So after shutting down his computer, he opened the side and pulled out the hard drive. He looked around and smiled, finding what he needed next: it was an award he received from the National Academy of Sciences, displayed proudly on a prominent table. Brandishing it like a sledge hammer, he bashed in the side of the drive, pulled out the disc, and ran out of the office. While he was en route to the kitchen, his wife announced, “I’m ready.”

The microwave was set on ten minutes, the disc resting inside on the microwave cover, when he pressed the button.

“I’m right behind you.”

The black Escalade didn’t hesitate or seek obscurity in the shadows. It pulled up the drive resolutely and stopped behind a white pickup truck—its driver-side door left open by its hurried driver.

The flash of his blue-flamed torch, designed for inflicting pain on cigars, was applied to his last cigarette. Instead of savoring its burn, he took one violent puff and stepped out of the vehicle. His face, red from burns, scowled at his target’s house. A deep gash on the right side of his face was held together with a piece of duct tape. Two small rivulets of crimson seeped from its binding and skipped over the stubble of his normally clean face; it would be the closest he would come to shedding tears for this next victim.

But then, beyond the truck, the garage door was left open, empty of all vehicles, telling him they had left already.

He stepped through, just as the owner would after a day at work. After entering the house, he withdrew his weapon, no longer bothering with the silencer. A sound alerted him to the kitchen. It was the microwave, cooking something that was sparking inside, the display telling him there were only five minutes twelve seconds until its contents were ready. He punched the door button with his forefinger knuckle and the door squeaked open to reveal the disc of a hard drive on top of a plastic microwave dish. It was warm, but otherwise salvageable. His handlers might not be entirely upset with his work after all.

“Where are we going?” his wife asked, as Monty tossed the bubble mailer into the mail drop.

“To our cabin in Arizona.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, and you can’t tell anyone that we’re there.”

“Fine. How long will we be there?”

Monty looked at his phone’s calendar, did the math and said, “Ten months, sixteen days.”

She shifted the cat-carrier from her lap to the back seat. Faraday was already asleep, as if he knew it would be a long drive. “Then what?”

“We’re driving with Dr. Ron’s wife Betsy and his brother-in-law Peter to a place in Colorado called Cicada.”

The sun stood over him like a big bully in a schoolyard, having its way with him and those who were foolish enough to venture outside. Even though fall was supposedly just around the corner, there appeared to be no end to this sweltering heat.

Dr. Ron tied a bandana around his head to protect it against the sun’s punishing rays, secured his satchel of supplies around his shoulder and peddled back to his own laboratory. His peddling was methodical but unenthusiastic. He knew where Dr. Mendelson was now—at least where he was headed—but Colorado was a long way away on a bicycle. Even if he could make it in this harsh environment, how would he find this man, get the cure and get back in time for the one or two probes Monty might be able to send? No, his mission was a failure. He would at least tell his friend what he could expect in the present-day world, coming for them in less than a year. He would ask him to try and send another probe or two, but suspected he would be prevented by others from doing so: Monty would be lucky to stay out of jail after getting just one probe back through the time slip right after him.

He kept thinking about his decision to come here and leave Betsy.

The heat sucked up his energy and made his mind wander back to the same memory. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was something else…

It was their 20
^th
anniversary dinner, at Betsy’s favorite restaurant, The Saltgrass Steak House. They were sipping their glasses of Cabernet when he told her his concerns about their current work.

“I’ve come to a decision,” he said tentatively, as he watched her delight in the taste of her wine.

“What’s that, Doctor?” She always referred to Ron this way when he made a serious proclamation.

He grinned at her playfulness and relished how she looked at him, with joyful love and seriousness all at once. “I’m afraid of where we’ve gone with our research. We know that we can generate an almost unlimited amount of gamma radiation with minimal power usage. But what we hadn’t considered are the implications. If this technology were to get into the wrong hands, imagine what could happen.” He paused to take a sip of his own wine.

“Someone could create a big green Hulk that would smash everyone in sight, right?” She beamed at him.

He had told her his concerns about the release of too much gamma radiation—the output of the technology they had created— and what it might do to the earth’s magnetic fields. He had reminded her about his ideas to generate clean power using the same technology, and he had already received an agreement from their backers. She had agreed and they toasted some more.

That night, they had talked about his plans to create the same collider that sent him through time. If she hadn’t supported it, he wouldn’t have traveled through time to save her, and failed. It was her agreement, and the fact that his old lab had been burgled and vandalized that same evening: all his computer equipment and all his research notes were stolen…

Ron almost drove past his building, his mind hanging onto something that escaped him.

He pulled up to the lab and rested his bike on the ground before going in. Once inside, he stopped at the railing and looked out over the giant laboratory, wrecked from an explosion and scarred by fire. He wondered if a time slip would ever be created again in his lifetime, or the next.

Then he noticed it, right past the middle of the two accelerator tubes. It looked like a propped up white board, with writing on it.

He trotted down the stairs and then to the back of the lab, coming to a stop in front of the white board. He had planned on using it to write his own message. And yet there it was, a message already written on it. The first words stunned him. He fell to his knees, as if his legs could no longer bear his weight. His face quivered, his eyes filled with tears and he gulped a breath of air and held it. Finally, he finished reading the words and cried tears of joy. He wiped his eyes with his sleeves and reread the message once more, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. It was definite.

He looked upward, closed his eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” He hopped up, as nimble as a sixteen-year-old, and his mind turned over what items would go on his next shopping list. He was about to bike hundreds of miles, to someplace in Colorado. And although he would be tired, he would find the energy. He was going to go see his wife again.

After ten months and seventeen days of hiding, their wait was at an end.

Monty drove past the sign in the middle of the road announcing, “Welcome to Cicada” and pulled up to the large gate. Sounds of their anxiety filled the cab of Monty’s Explorer.

Until today, they had spent untold hours discussing their plans after getting the message from the future. “What do you do with this foreknowledge?” was their greatest debate. “How do you sit on something that may save millions, but might cause harm to those who delivered the message to them?” was another biggie. In the end, Monty was the most persuasive and they agreed on the plan, to wait until this day and then drive here.

The waiting was the hardest, the long days spent in solitude in the Arizona White Mountains, while the world went about their daily activities. It allowed their minds to harbor doubt, and that laid waste to their surety of purpose. By the time this day rolled around, they all questioned the reality of the message, in spite of all they witnessed: the retelling and presentation of the data Monty saved was convincing, but above all, it was Betsy’s miraculous turnaround. And yet, the waiting ate at their resolve and all wondered,
Would the Event really come on June 28th?
But yesterday evening’s very abnormal auroral light show seemed to confirm its probability.
Would this place they were going to go to even exist
? And yet, here they were, parked in front of Cicada.

The gates creaked open and the vehicle’s occupants watched in anticipation of what would come next.

They were all seated around a giant cherry conference table, in sumptuous leather chairs on rollers, more like being in the board room of some giant Fortune 500 company than the conference room of a remote research facility.

“So, Dr. Montgomery, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me why you are here,” asked Preston with a tone that was more command than query. He was the head of the facility and the man they had been told to seek out.

“Please call me Monty. May I call you Preston?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Tomorrow, the world will experience the worst solar storm in recorded history. The Event, as it will be known, will not only turn out the lights, but kill much of the world’s population.” Monty watched for Preston’s reaction: his face remained stoic, the statement eliciting none of the shock, or at least disbelief, Monty expected. “You don’t seem surprised.” The words were merely a verbalization of his suspicion that Preston somehow knew what was coming.

“You haven’t answered how you found out about Cicada and what you are doing here.” Preston’s tone now confirmed Monty’s suspicion. He knew already.

Monty opened his satchel and withdrew two stapled pages he had printed, each containing the imbedded screen-shots of the meticulous handwriting on a whiteboard: the message that sent them here. The first page said,

My name is Dr. Greg Mendelson. I am writing this for two reasons: first to warn you of an impending apocalypse that will hit you on June 28
^th
and second to give you the cure to Betsy Stoneridge’s cancer. You will find the formula for an experimental drug we have found to be 100% effective in all of our early tests against most forms of cancer.

I am not prone to flights of fancy, yet here I am, after being told that I would write this at this point in the future, to warn others in the past. Paradoxical improbabilities aside, I knew this to be real when I was told “Luxembourg1989”—my computer password—as the place and date I met my wife, now deceased from cancer
.