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Greg got into the office early so he could get started again on the search for something — anything — that might be the solution to why the time pod couldn’t return. He headed to the project room, sat down at his computer, and began where he had left off the day before. He had been working for about an hour when Susan arrived.
“Hey, I see you got an early start.”
“Yeah, I want to figure this out as soon as possible. I know it’s only been six days, but I miss Paulette terribly.”
Susan sat down next to Greg, plugged her USB drive in, and began work. They combed through thousands of lines of code and looked over documents for hours. Their eyes were crossing, but they kept at it.
At one point, Susan perked up. “Hey, I think I found something, what do you think?”
Greg leaned over to look at her monitor. “It’s possible that could be the problem. Not sure though. All these math symbols are giving me a headache. Why don’t you tag that code so we can come back to it later and inspect it?”
This whole search thing was eating up a lot of their time. They still had a company to keep operating. They feared at some point that they might have to just give up. They discussed maybe even hiring a few experts familiar with time travel.
Neither wanted to do that just yet though. It would violate Paulette’s mandate that no one else was to know about the existence of time travel yet. She had been afraid of the implications and consequences it could have on the world if it got into the wrong hands. Susan wondered, though, if she could put a few probes out into the scientific community just to see what came back. She thought if expressed as just an intellectual exercise and not a real problem, she might get an answer.
When Susan and Greg finally came up for air, they realized it was already nighttime and that they had been working non-stop for over ten hours. “I think we should give this a break for a while,” Susan suggested.
“Yeah, I think you might be right. I’ve looked at about ninety percent of my files and can’t seem to fine anything that might help.”
“Yeah, me either. I’ve looked at close to eighty percent of mine and haven’t found anything useful yet. I don’t know if we’ll ever find a solution. What if she ends up being stuck there forever?”
“I don’t want to think about that right now. Heck, it’s only been a week.”
“True, but we can’t keep this up every day. We’ve got a company to run.”
“You’re right. Maybe we can hire someone to run the bionics portion of the company, get a new R&D manager, and maybe even hire a few specialists for the time-travel project.”
“That might work for the company. I think Richard can move into my position, and we can hire a new technician for the lab. As far as hiring people for the time project, I’m not sure. We’d really have to be careful. No one can ever talk about the project. At this point, all they’d know is that it doesn’t work correctly. If we ever find a solution, we risk them talking.”
“You’re right. We’d have to vet these people even more than for a top-secret clearance and make sure that nothing left the company.”
“You think we should go ahead with our plans? Do you think Paulette will be mad when she finds out?”
“Who knows and who cares at this point? She can’t get mad if we never get her back.”
“True. Okay, let’s do this. It’ll take time before we can get everything up and running with new people.”
“It will, but I think it’s best.”
Greg and Susan put the USB drives in a secure location and then exited the project room. They went their separate ways for the evening. Greg was finally able to go back to his apartment. Neither of them knew how long it would take to get a resolution to the problem, leaving Paulette to wait and, hopefully, survive in her future world — wherever that was.
