4

The Chamber

Officially the space was known as the temporal projection chamber, unofficially “the Bubble” due to its general shape. The team members walked in dressed in their period clothing and for a moment gawked at what lay before them, while Dr. Weiss beamed with pride at what he’d had a part in creating.

The whole large chamber was circular and stretched a hundred yards from one side to the other. The expected banks of computers, control equipment, and status monitors lay ringed around the outer walls, while on one far wall twenty feet above floor level was a stretch of armored glass behind which was the control booth. The main center of attention, though, was at the middle of the room, comprising a good chunk of its width.

A circle of man-sized pods ringed a raised central platform, the pods lying horizontally and covered with clear lids, currently hinged open. The pods were festooned with control and read-out panels and bathed in a soft inner light. At the back of each pod was an arm-thick braided cable stretching into the air to the apparatus fixed into the ceiling forty feet above. The circular platform on which the pods were arranged was elevated a step above the ground and was currently a hub of activity with a pair of technicians doing their last-minute checks.

The ceiling resembled a large alternator or generator of some sort, with each of the pod cables connecting to its edge at a different point along its circumference. From there a tangle of thick cables wound their way around the hundred-foot circle of tightly wrapped wiring to meet in the center at what looked like a large metal ball, polished to a mirrored sheen. From the back of the ball projected two long metal arms attached end to end behind the ball in a straight line, growing wider toward their ends. The arms stretched along the arc of the curved cable-covered portion of the ceiling before slanting down a couple of feet past that portion of the apparatus, their wider ends bearing a resemblance to propeller blades.

That the twin arms were made to spin, using the ball as their axis, was obvious from their appearance. The inner edges of the arms seemed like they would barely touch the tightly packed mass of cabling above them, lending even more of a resemblance to a generator.

For a moment all the team could do was stare as the double doors hissed closed behind them, marveling at what they were about to climb into.

Agent Sue Harris made the first remark. “Do I have to wear these heels? The dress I can understand, but I’ve managed to stay away from high heels for most of my adult life.”

The incongruous remark snapped the men out of their daze and earned a flicker of a grin from Professor Stein before he gave his reply. “Period clothing usually precluded women wearing anything you might term as comfortable. It was all about elegance, at least in the circles we must engage with. You should be more concerned about being a black woman in New York in the year 1919. Not as bad as down in the southern states of the time; more like ‘sophisticated discrimination.’ Interestingly, when it came to blacks, the women’s suffrage movement‍—‍”

Agent Hessman cut him off. “Ben, I think we can worry about that later.”

“What? Oh, right. Sorry, I can get carried away sometimes. In fact, there was this one party when I‍—‍”

“Ben?”

To Agent Hessman’s more focused glare, Professor Stein dropped into immediate silence.

The clothing Agent Harris was complaining about consisted of a calf-length velvet dress colored different shades of maroon, with some patterning sewn in down its length, and wrapped at the waist by a velvet belt. On her head she wore a wide-brimmed, floppy hat topped by a flowered decoration that might have accented her features if she could have done anything but scowl. Then, of course, she had donned the aforementioned footwear, which was less like modern-day high heels and more like high-heeled women’s boots.

For the men, the attire was pretty uniform: slim-fitting business suits with high-, white-collared dress shirts and matching vests—navy worsted for Professor Stein, dark brown pinstripe for Lieutenant Phelps, and gray worsted for Dr. Weiss, all with matching bowler hats—while Captain Beck had a striped double-breasted suit and a fedora. A pocket watch and bob on a gold chain hung between his breast pockets. The lace-up boots the men all wore were ubiquitous for the period.

Agent Hessman stood out a little from the rest, his suit being more of a light green summer color, with a straw boater hat atop his head. He was also less overwhelmed by the apparatus before them than the rest. His mind was already totally on the mission.

“Welcome to the Bubble, as we like to call it.” Dr. Weiss beamed. “It should be quite the show to see this thing finally fired up.”

Ben, for one, immediately went from awe and wonder into a concerned glare, while Lieutenant Phelps’s eyes narrowed considerably.

“You mean it’s untested?” Professor Stein asked.

“We have yet to send back so much as a squirrel,” Dr. Weiss stated with a grin as he gazed nearly lovingly at what lay before them. “This will be the first time, and we the first-time travelers‍—well, besides whoever beat us back there, of course. But you get my point.”

“Okay, enough of the gawking,” Agent Hessman said, taking charge. “We’ve all been outfitted with period clothing and enough period money for anything we might need.”

“Reasonable facsimile of period money,” Ben said, taking out a couple of bills from his pocket to briefly wave around, “but I don’t think they have anything back in that period to detect our little forgeries. Just keep spending to a minimum. For that matter, any sort of interaction.”

“Agreed,” Dr. Weiss stated. “The less of a temporal impact we make, the better.”

“Ben’s pocket computer is one of the few concessions to modern technology we’re allowed,” Agent Hessman continued. “As are these.” He took out of his pocket what looked like a metal golf ball with two red buttons on either side of it.

Dr. Weiss then continued with the explanation. “Our beacons. Pressing both buttons at the same time will send out a weak artificial TDW that the equipment here in the present will then pick up. When it does, the apparatus here will immediately yank your consciousness back into your body.”

Captain Beck now spoke up as they proceeded to step onto the central platform. “Just so we’re clear, Doctor, a quick refresher on what’s about to happen, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” the doctor said as he stepped up. “The apparatus above us will create a wormhole through space and time to the destination we have set. Our consciousnesses will then be pulled through and projected back into the past, where exact replicas of our bodies and everything on us will be created from the energy umbilical connecting us back to the present through the wormhole. Once our beacons are activated, the projections of our bodies in the past will be uncreated and drawn back as energy through the wormhole, with our consciousnesses going immediately back into our original bodies here in these pods. It should be perfectly painless.”

“So is death by lethal injection,” Agent Harris deadpanned.

“Don’t worry, we have run plenty of simulations and tests. Also, one caveat about these beacons: While we are pretty sure they should work as designed, this will be the first time they’ll have been used. And by their very nature, these beacons are a one-shot use.”

“Getting back would be nice,” Captain Beck stated, “but as long as this mission comes off, the rest doesn’t matter.”

“This umbilical,” Ben asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence, “and the wormhole, for that matter. If anyone from back in 1919 sees it‍—‍”

“Invisible to all concerned,” Dr. Weiss assured him. “The wormhole can only be seen or entered by way of certain energies the technology back then simply does not possess. We’ll also be able to go anywhere in the world and still be connected through the wormhole, though the farther away from our drop area we go, the more energy our bubble chamber here will draw. But that’s a concern for our technicians here.”

He beamed a quick grin at the nearest lab-coated worker, who replied with a brief nod, then returned to prepping and double-checking the chamber.

“Question.” It was Lieutenant Phelps, speaking up for the first time that anyone could remember. “What happens if this energy umbilical is somehow broken or the wormhole and power flow disrupted?”

“A very good question,” Dr. Weiss replied with a slight nod, “and one we aren’t entirely sure of the answer to. You could be stuck back in time in your fabricated body while your original back here in the present immediately dies, or your consciousness could simply snap back into your present-time body here in these pods. It’s about an even chance of either possibility.”

“Second question,” the lieutenant replied. “How will our bodies be maintained while we’re gone?”

“After our bodies are scanned and our minds sent back, tethers within the pods will hook up to us to handle such needs as food, water, and waste,” Dr. Weiss explained.

“But this is time travel,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t it just be a matter of returning the same moment we left, or something like that?”

“Logically, yes,” Dr. Weiss agreed. “But remember that we’ll have a wormhole kept open with a live real-time connection to us the entire time. So for every day you experience back in 1919, your bodies back here will also experience that same length of time. Which brings up another matter limiting our time.” He paced over to one of the pods, his back to it as he slowly sat down while explaining.

“Besides having no longer than the length of the temporal displacement event to fix things, the wormhole imposes its own limits in the amount of power required to hold it open. If we have not yet returned before the power requirements become too severe, then the energy umbilical could snap, trapping us back in 1919.”

“How long?” Agent Harris asked flatly as she went over to her own pod to sit down.

“There has been some debate about that. It could be as much as ninety-six hours or as little as forty-eight. We really aren’t sure, this being the first time and all.”

“Let’s assume forty-eight,” Agent Hessman stated. “Two full days to find out what’s happened and stop it before we risk mission failure. Everyone clear?”

No one said a thing.

“Good. Then strap us into these things.”

They each picked a pod and lay down within it, the technicians quickly hooking up various wires and sensor pads around their bodies before closing the lids on the pods. They resembled a circle of elongated eggs. The technicians then cleared out of the chamber through a door that led into the main control booth. Then came the wait, as even Dr. Weiss wondered what their journey would be like.

The wait would not be long. Power surged suddenly through the mass of wiring, spitting down through the thick cables to each of the pods and surrounding them in a brightening glow. But as Professor Stein wondered what was to happen next, he and the others were quick to discover this was but the start. High overhead, the large twin metal propeller blades that curved beneath the wire-covered dome began to turn, slowly at first before spinning up to speed. Electrical sparks leaped from the backs of the blades to the cabling above.

Faster and faster the blades spun, the sparks more intense until the whole ceiling began to glow. The spinning blades became a blur, the electrical activity they generated filling the entire ceiling with a bright white light, until nothing of wires or spinning blades was visible.

Through their transparent pod lids, the team members could see the entire dome above them now like a small star as the chamber filled with the resonating echo of power. The roar of creation itself unleashed until the very mouth of that beast fully opened above them. In the center of that circle of blinding brilliance an eye opened, a dark pupil a dozen feet across, while a crack of thunder shook the chamber.

In the moment the eye lashed out, pulses of energy shot down the cables to the pods; then all within the pods filled with white light.

Up in the main control booth, General Karlson silently wished the travelers well.