1

Symposium

At the International Symposium on Time Travel, Professor Gregson’s little talk, and the peace of the room, were abruptly interrupted when the central double doors at the back burst open, accompanied by a man in a military uniform, his manner as abrupt as his entry. He was flanked by a pair of soldiers bearing sidearms, while a flow of local security mixed with police and military soldiers hurried across the hall behind them. If his entry failed to get everyone’s attention, what he called out in his commanding voice would not.

“This entire place is hereby under lockdown, by order of the secretary general.” He marched down the central aisle as if he owned it. Wide-eyed audience members shuffled around or stood on tiptoe to see who was creating the stir. Behind the podium, Professor Gregson was also shocked at the intrusion.

“Now see here,” the professor objected. “You cannot barge in here and take control of our conference! We have all the proper paperwork and clearances with the various agencies and‍—‍”

“None of which matters anymore,” the military man stated flatly.

The men flowing in behind him spread across the room, taking positions at any possible exit and dark corner, searching behind curtains and folded room dividers, as well as among those seated, and receiving a flood of annoyed remarks in the process. The man in the center of it ignored the professor’s protests and hopped up onto the stage, while two more men from each wing of the stage rushed up to surround him, pulling Professor Gregson away from the podium as their commander now took the microphone.

“I am Colonel Matheson, and this entire conference is hereby under military command.”

“This is outrageous,” the professor began. “You have no reason to‍—‍”

“When a murder has been committed, I have all the reason!”

* * *

“Time travel is a thing of the past.”

The man with the trim white beard at the podium delivering this statement got a few scattered chuckles from among those in the crowded assembly hall, along with one or two eye rolls. He waited a couple of seconds before replying with a smile, “I see that joke is starting to get a little bit old . . . Well, I guess it’s about time.”

The speaker got fewer chuckles this time and took an even shorter pause. “Okay, enough with the bad jokes. Welcome to the International Symposium on Time Travel, a platform whereby we can exchange current theories and technological developments in the science of time travel. I am Professor Gregson, the symposium host and head speaker, and my job is to keep things flowing while making sure none of you violate whatever your nation’s secrecy act happens to be.”

A few more chuckles came in response this time, the mood of the assembly settling down to something a bit more comfortable. The speaker noted this change before continuing. “Now, seeing as how this is our first little get-together, before I leave you in the hands of our other speakers, I thought a quick recap was in order.”

He shuffled his notes, bringing one pair of the small index cards he held in his hands to the forefront, cleared his throat once, and began. “As you all no doubt know, temporal waves were discovered in a lab in San Jose. The scientists there were actually looking for gravity waves, and for a while that’s what they thought they had. But time and space are interlinked, and once the source kept tracing back to a location here on Earth‍—well, they arrived at the obvious conclusion that they were looking at a TW. Since then, government labs around the world have been hard at work developing new and better ways of detecting and using these temporal waves.

“The lab discovered that because of the way time and space are so interwoven, the origin of these TWs could be traced back not only to a given period in time but to a physical location as well. The precision of such measurements has been getting better over the years, but of course there is a limit to the resolution dictated by the uncertainty principle; one cannot know with absolute precision both the exact time and place at the same time.”

Several in the audience nodded; others looked bored. This part was already quite well known to everyone attending. Professor Gregson shuffled the next index card to the top of his small stack and resumed.

“Such waves carry with them invaluable information about the past, allowing someone with the proper technology to use them as a window into the past and to see for ourselves the flow of history as it actually occurred. That is the impetus that drives us all in our research and the reason why we are here today to exchange information. We have many hurdles to overcome yet, and also many dangers to be aware of; but I’ll get to those in a minute.”

Somewhere in the back of the hall he could see a man in a white suit approaching another white-suited security guard who stood his position by a set of closed double doors. The one guard spoke in furtive whispers to get the other’s attention. The professor, though, paid the side conversation little heed and continued with his narration.

“Normally such waves are smooth, acting as carrier waves for the information they allow us access to. But with the genie of time travel set loose, we have to now consider other possibilities as well, and so it has been theorized when the smooth flow of these TWs may be disrupted. In essence, time-space is like an ocean, smooth and calm. But what if some agency from outside its own time were to go back in time and create some change in history? That disruption would cause a ripple in the smooth flow of the temporal waves, manifesting as what we would call a temporal disruption wave, or TDW. The cause of such a TDW would, naturally, be a temporal disruption event, or TDE. Such a TDW would be like a sudden surge on our smooth ocean, with the bigger the change in history resulting in larger-amplitude TDWs. These changes would then ripple forward through time until any changes they carry have caught up with our present. After that, the possible results are all quite debatable. Would we even remember the former past? Or, as some would argue, do cause and effect have to be preserved over the four-dimensional realm, meaning that at least a few people somewhere would have to remember both versions of history? And what about the possible paradoxes that might result; how do we resolve those?”

He let these statements linger for a moment, watching the quiet discussions build through his audience before grinning. “Of course, such TDWs have not yet been detected, and some would argue that, by their very nature, since we have yet to detect one, we never will.” He heard a few chuckles in response, to which he gave a nod and continued.

At the back of the room, a third security guard had briefly joined the other two before all three hurried out the back door.

“To continue with more current events in our field, efforts have been focused the past decade on using these TWs as a window through which to see our past without running the risk of physically traveling back‍—at least not yet. It is fairly common knowledge among our rarefied group that three main teams are working on developing equipment to actually travel back in time: the Americans, the Germans, and the Japanese. But don’t worry, no one’s actually turned their machine on and used it yet; we’re all too afraid of what could happen if one of us accidentally killed our own grandfather.”

After the smattering of uncomfortable laughter had quieted, the professor continued, “That brings us to the current state of time travel itself. All three teams are rumored to be working on their own variation of the same technology, but as some of you already know, it does not look like your classic science-fiction approach, where you simply walk into a machine and come out the other end in a different time. In fact, if space-time is like that calm ocean, then time traveling is like a bottle afloat on that ocean, and the message inside that bottle is the time traveler. Because, you see, we do not send a traveler back per se, but rather the traveler’s information.”

He shuffled to the next index card while his audience absorbed the explanation. Some knew of this already, but others were hearing this for the first time. After all, the purpose of this conference was to get everyone up to speed on current developments.

“Traveling through time involves the creation and use of an Einstein-Rosen bridge through space-time. Many of us would know that by its more common name: a wormhole. For bulk matter to go straight through a wormhole, however, could be quite hazardous, at least with our current understanding. But that does not mean we cannot make an appearance back in the past. Dr. Hamilton will be going over this in more detail in his lecture at two, but in essence, we send our information back through time. Trying to send matter back through a wormhole still poses almost as much risk as diving into a black hole, but data is another story. The data in this case would be of the traveler plus everything on him: clothes, equipment, and whatnot. Our traveler would manifest, in essence, as a ghost. He would still be connected back to the present through the wormhole by a sort of energy umbilical, and through this umbilical his ghostly form would be given solid mass.”

A quiet sea of voices rose as people discussed among themselves the possibilities this raised and all that it implied. Not all of the voices, however, were discussing the subject at hand. A small huddle of security personnel had gathered at the rear of the room, intent on their own conversation spoken in hushed whispers.

“The original body of our traveler would remain here in the present, sealed away in a pod, but his information would be sent back through the wormhole, as well as his consciousness. One mind, two bodies, as it were, one of them an avatar in the past. Then to get back, you either turn off the energy stream or kill your avatar‍—and hope that doesn’t kill your consciousness along with it. Those would be some of the problems still yet to be solved, but Dr. Sam Weiss of the American team will be going over that in a lot more detail in his lecture later on.”

At the far end of the chamber, a couple of the security men appeared to be quietly securing the doors, while others in blue uniforms crept in for a quick discussion with them.

“Also on the schedule will be a talk by Dr. Graystein, an American doing excellent work on fine-tuning the resolution of tracing temporal waves; he says within a year or two it may be possible to narrow our resolution down to within half a day and a couple of miles. Then this evening, British Professor Miles will be discussing his work in using TWs to create a temporal map that would allow one to see the regular flow of history. By examining the amplitudes and phases of time waves, we would be able to see if someone tries to change history. Then of course there’s Dr. Hamilton, as I’ve mentioned, and a guest from the Japanese team, who will‍—‍”

* * *

“I am Colonel Matheson, and this entire conference is hereby under military command.”

“This is outrageous,” the professor began. “You have no reason to‍—‍”

“When a murder has been committed, I have all the reason!”

Colonel Matheson’s statement immediately got the attention it was designed to, as all in the room now fell into stunned silence.

“Two murders, in fact,” the colonel continued. “Dr. Graystein and Professor Miles have both been found dead in their rooms, each one killed by a knife wound to the back. Now, if you’ll all just cooperate, I’m sure we can have you on your way before the weekend is up.”

Professor Gregson was not the only one left in open-mouthed shock.