“If one is ruled by destiny, then every choice one makes is pre-scribed into the foundation of the universe. It presupposes that the individual has no choice. Destiny is finite. It is only through the belief that the individual choices we make determine our future that one can grasp the infinite and the divine.”
~ Treatise on the Divinity of Science by Lara M. Rushell I3—2071
Monday January 20, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Sam leaned against the hood of her rental car while Bosco hung his head out the window, panting in the chilly sixty-degree weather. A sizable puddle of drool had collected in the pothole by the car. He whined, and Sam reached out to scratch his ear. “Wait for it. Henry should be out in a few minutes.”
Ten minutes later, Henry appeared, walking through the glass-lined hall leading out of the correctional facility. He’d grown a scraggly beard and was wearing a pair of slacks with a white undershirt. Probably the same clothes he’d been arrested in. The desk clerk scanned him out, handed him a receipt for something—possibly his shoes since he was shuffling in prison slippers—and he stumbled to the door.
He stepped outside with a bitter glare at the clear, afternoon sky.
“Henry!” Sam waved her hand.
His shoulders slumped, and he shuffled across the broken parking lot. “I told Devon I’d pay the gas.” He stopped a few feet from the car. “Agent Rose?”
“In the flesh.” Sam put on her friendliest smile.
He stepped backward. “I really was hoping my roommate would pick me up.”
“In the car, Henry. We need to talk.”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked as he skulked closer to the car. “This is about the machine, isn’t it?”
Bosco’s tail thrummed on the roof of the car. He leaned out, trying to lick Henry.
“Ni-nice dog. Agent Rose, I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I’m . . .” He let out a deflated sigh. Shaking his head, he said, “This is too much. I’m going to the apartment, buying the plane tickets, and flying home to Palawan. It doesn’t have the kind of physics research the Commonwealth has. It doesn’t have much except for views, but it’s home, and it’s safe. I can let things calm down. Maybe get a job somewhere else. Start over.” He shot an angry look at her. “Did you have to tell them about Krystal?”
Sam waited for him to finish whatever it was he was ranting about, resting her elbows on the roof the car. When he was done, she asked, “Do you believe in destiny?”
Troom frowned at her in derision. “What?”
“Do you believe in destiny? That you have no choice in what the future holds? That every action is set in stone, even before it happens?”
“No. That’s utter nonsense. You can only believe in destiny if you don’t believe in science. It’s nonsensical. Ridiculous. Why do you ask?”
Sam snapped her fingers and pointed to the rear seat. “Bosco, trô lai.”
Bosco climbed into the backseat and lay down.
“You are destined to die in nine weeks. I know, because five years ago, I was the agent called to the lab to identify your body.”
Henry opened the car door and sat inside. “Nine weeks in the future was five years in your past?”
“Yes.” She dropped into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind her. “Want to close the door, so I can turn on the AC?”
He shut it. “You’re talking about time travel.”
“Yes.”
Henry buckled his seat belt. “Dr. Emir never achieved time travel.”
She was glad he caught on quick. “Oh, he did. He just didn’t know what he had.” She turned on the car and drove toward A1A. “The Emir you worked with didn’t fully understand what he’d created. He thought he could send messages to the past, to warn himself about upcoming events.”
“To warn the government,” Henry corrected primly.
She shrugged. “Either way, he meant to send messages. His machine didn’t work like that.”
“I know!” Henry huffed and crossed his arms across his chest. “One of my biggest regrets is that he never got to see that dream come true. He worked so hard for it. It kills me he couldn’t have it.”
“Oh, he got it,” Sam said. “That’s what killed him.”
“Huh?”
“The machine doesn’t connect a single stream of time—it connects with alternate versions of reality. In some realities, Emir is alive and well. In some, I’m a psychopathic husband-napper. In some, things are really terrible. And, probably, in some of them, things are really great.”
He held up a hand. “Go back to the bit where Emir fulfilled his dream, and it killed him.”
“Another Emir from another reality killed our Emir,” she grumbled. “Well, technically, he convinced Marrins to kill our Emir by promising Marrins a chance to go back in time and stop the nationhood vote. But then he betrayed Marrins and left us for dead. Except now he’s back, I think, and someone’s kidnapped Mac.”
“Mac?” His expression had grown more and more confused as she spoke, and it was clear he had latched onto the last piece of information to formulate the first question he could think of.
Henry shifted in his seat. “What are you doing here?”
“I need you to finish rebuilding Emir’s machine. You started it, didn’t you?”
He looked out the window.
“Henry . . .” Sam drawled his voice as if she were talking to a rebellious child. “Lying doesn’t work. I’ve been to your future. I know you have.”
“I could have built it in that iteration of time and not this time,” he said. “Emir explained the probability fan to me. If you were moving around the flow of time, you could have diverged multiple times. You probably did.” His confused frown turned to a glare. “You probably broke time.”
“I accept that,” Sam said with forced cheerfulness. “Regardless, I need to get Mac back. And I need you to help me. So let’s make this easy; tell me what you need to finish the machine, and I’ll get it for you.”
“I need the core Dr. Emir used on the original machine. It’s a rare material, and you can’t legally source it in the Commonwealth. Not even for research. The best I can do will probably lead to an explosion.”
Sam nodded to his feet. “Check my purse, the zipper pocket.”
“Okay . . .” He reached down and opened her purse. A pale glow illuminated it. “Is that . . . is that what I think it is?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Sam glanced at him, then turned her attention back to the road. “Don’t ask. Check the outer pocket. There’s a notebook there.”
“This is mine,” Henry said. He turned through the pages. “This is not mine. It looks identical, but the dates here are wrong. I didn’t journal in prison. I never did half of this. What is this math back here?”
“Calculations that allow you to target where the portals can open. Which leads me to project two.”
“Wait, what was project one?”
Her palms were sweaty on the car wheel. “I need you to rebuild the machine and program in coordinates that will allow me to enter the timeline Mac is trapped in, so I can get him out. Having something to help me get back out would be great, but I’m not sure we can do that. But, something you said made me think about this case I’m working. You said you tested the machine, and little dust devils popped up?”
“More like sand fountains. You could recreate the effect with sound waves or magnets. Sand grains are very responsive.”
Sam nodded. “Look at the back of your notebook. I tucked a map in there. Tell me what you see?”
Henry unfolded the paper. “Lots of red dots.”
“Look for a pattern.”
“Can I draw on this?”
“Sure, the stylus is—”
“—in your purse. I figured.” He started connecting the dots. “It’s rings. A spiral pattern. But if you were looking for concentric rings, this would be the intercept points where a moving pattern would overlap.”
Sam blinked.
“Think of throwing a rock into a pond. The kinetic energy from the rock produces concentric rings that ripple through the water. Now, throw multiple rocks in a neat line, each landing a little closer to shore than the last. There’s a ring around each one, but they overlap, interacting.”
She nodded. “That fits.”
“What do you think is happening?”
“I think someone is using those fountains of energy to cross over from somewhere undetected. You were traveling, so the machine was traveling. Once you held still, a cluster formed around here, but at different points.”
“Oh,” Henry said. “So the person is using a different door each time.”
“If we have those points, though, it’s just math. We can calculate backward and find where they came from. Right?” She stopped for a red light and looked at Henry. “Am I right?”
He shrugged. “I need to look at the maps, but, in theory it sounds good.”
“I need to be right. If I’m wrong, the price is going to be too high.”