part0007

The questions from the FBI agents were getting ever stranger.

Daniel didn’t mind helping on the science side of their investigation, but educating these guys on time dilation, relativity and the limits theorized by Einstein, Hawking, Carroll, Thorne, Greene and others was going to take a lot more than twenty minutes. Nala was upstairs waiting.

“Do I know how to travel to the future? Absolutely,” Daniel said. “We all do. We’re doing it right now. Ticktock. Now we’re in the future.”

“Not exactly what I meant,” Agent Griffith responded. He looked irritated at Daniel’s rather flippant remark. Fair enough, but his was a beginner’s question.

Daniel avoided further eye rolls and bit his facetious tongue. “I apologize. Of course, that’s not what you meant.” There was no reason to waste the agents’ time, but neither was there any reason to waste Daniel’s. “Maybe you can tell me the reason for your questions? I’m a scientist, but I’m not a theoretical physicist or a cosmologist, and I’m certainly no expert on the inner workings of the portal down at KSC. These might be good questions for Zin or Core, though I doubt they’ll tell you much. I can also recommend a few books.”

Both agents sat stony-faced. Daniel gestured with both hands. “Look, I’m sorry to hear this engineer misused the technology to kill himself, but what does any of this have to do with me?”

Without answering, Griffith looked at Torre. “Are you satisfied?”

Torre nodded. “I believe so. I think we can proceed.”

Griffith eyed Daniel. “Our apologies for the indirect questions, but we needed to uncover your relationship with Mr. Becton, both now and in the future. ”

“Mr. Becton is dead,” Daniel answered. “I don’t think he has much of a future.”

“Not anymore, but he may have been to the future, possibly your future.” Griffith’s serious demeanor hadn’t changed in the slightest, even if the conversation had taken a turn toward the incredible.

“An interesting statement. Your evidence?” As cosmologist Carl Sagan had famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This had better be good.

Torre unzipped a compartment inside his briefcase. “Before he died, Mr. Becton told the Orlando police he was from the future.”

“A little fanciful, wouldn’t you say?” Flippant remarks could be set aside out of politeness, but not Daniel’s innate skepticism. “Your own investigation identifies Becton as an engineer at NASA. That’s today’s NASA, I assume.”

“Perhaps Becton is not from the future but had recently been there.” Torre reached into the briefcase compartment and pulled out a coin. It glittered with gold and silver colors as he turned it. “He told the police to give this coin to you. He mentioned you by name. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen it?” He handed the coin to Daniel.

Moving holograms popped from each side, iridescent with the full spectrum of visible colors. Daniel absorbed the elaborate details, including the writing around the edge. “Quite a beautiful object. It certainly gets your attention, but no, I’ve never seen it before. And as I said, lots of people know my name.”

“Yes, sir. I think we’ve established that you don’t currently know Mr. Becton.”

Daniel looked up. “But I will know him? That’s your premise?”

“We’re not sure,” Griffith answered. “It’s possible Mr. Becton will become your associate. ”

Once more, Daniel glanced at the writing around the outside of the coin and turned to Torre. “My guess is you have a mirror in your briefcase?” On cue, Torre withdrew a circular mirror about the size of a dinner plate and set it on the table.

Daniel nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. You’ve done this before? Spinning this coin?”

“We have.”

Daniel smiled and reached out to the mirror, placing the edge of the coin on its surface. “Well, then, I feel left behind. Time to catch up.” He snapped his fingers and started the coin spinning.

The coin spun, and not just for a few seconds as expected. It wound itself up, spinning faster and emitting a throbbing tone that grew higher in pitch. Clearly more than a disc of metal, Daniel felt his natural skepticism beginning to fray.

“Fascinating.” He lowered his head to better examine the point of contact between the coin and the mirror. “Either it has an internal energy source, or it’s drawing reflected energy from the mirrored surface. Maybe a feedback mechanism creating an amplification. Nice science demonstration you have here.”

“Stay tuned,” Griffith said, a grin appearing on his face for the first time.

The tone’s frequency quickly surpassed the limits of human hearing. The spinning coin made an audible click, and an inverted cone of light illuminated the ceiling. Photographic images rotated within the cone, a man’s face as seen from different directions. The blur of images settled, each independent view coalescing into a single three-dimensional image of a man’s head as if a puzzle had self-assembled.

The man, probably in his seventies, had long white hair pulled back in a ponytail and several days of stubble on his face. He looked remarkably like Daniel .

Every detail of the face was depicted with the precision of a three-dimensional video. The eyes looked left and then right. The man smiled, and as the floating face began to speak, a chill went up Daniel’s body.

“This message is for Daniel Rice at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.” Except for some scratchiness, the voice sounded like his.

The older man cleared his throat. “This probably comes as a shock to you, Daniel. It did for me too. Like it or not, we’re one person, but at different points in time. Odd, isn’t it? Looking at a future version of yourself. You’re skeptical, of course.”

His mind raced through every possible explanation. An elaborate hoax, an alien technology, or something else? He squinted at the hovering head, noting the crook in the man’s left earlobe. He reached up and felt his own ear.

The floating head looked down. “It’s really not much different than watching any other recording of yourself. Of course, the time order is reversed, but you’ll get used to it. As I speak, it is April fourteenth, 2053. That’s a Monday, if you want to look it up. From your perspective, it’s thirty years in the future, but from my perspective it’s today. Of course, I could tell you things about the past thirty years that you can’t possibly know, but too much information isn’t wise, so don’t expect any stock market tips.”

He cleared his throat again. “But I will bring up one event, and it’s the reason for this message. A tragedy that will soon happen… soon, from your perspective.” The man looked straight ahead and spoke with conviction. “It was a nuclear missile launch. Very bad, with millions killed and significant areas still uninhabitable even in 2053. But here’s the thing, Daniel. There’s hope. We believe this destruction can and should be prevented. In fact, we believe that you can prevent it. ”

Daniel’s skepticism slipped further. The older man spoke in the same manner and tone as Daniel. Even the word choices matched his style and thought process. If this was a fake, it was a damned good one.

The gray-white ponytail was a stretch. Not my style. At least, not now.

“I’m going to ask a big favor, both for myself and all those millions of people who lost their lives. Come to 89 Peachtree Center, floor 97, Atlanta, Georgia on the afternoon of June second, 2053. Use the belt to get here. It works, you’ll see. I know you’re skeptical about all of this. I was too. This message is only one piece of evidence. Examine the rest and I’m confident you’ll arrive at the right decision. You will come to 2053, because I remember doing it.”

As the video concluded and the cone of light switched off, Daniel shook his head, believing in the clever technology but not remotely ready to accept the premise of the message.

Yet the conviction of his initial assessment was accompanied by an odd feeling of déjà vu. Standing in the Diastasi lab a year before, he had held a four-dimensional tesseract in his hand. Another impossible feat that had somehow found a niche in reality.