Chapter 3
Her next stop was to see Daniel, one of the scientists for their Quadrant. Or as he would now be known to her: Time Machine Guy. He didn’t look like a scientist per se. He was tall and boyish, with a perpetual smile and lots of enthusiasm. Mary had ‛dated’ him a year or two back. And by ‛dating’ Helen meant ‛boned.’ Mary was a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of gal. Daniel had hung around longer than most though, and Helen considered him a friend.
Daniel was already smiling as she came in, extending one arm wide as he showed her a monstrously large white machine that was kind of egg-like. “Here it is! This is the baby that’s going to send you back in time. How cool is this? You’re impressed, aren’t you?”
“Impressed and terrified,” she said. “But it’s an incredible accomplishment. Congratulations.” She might have to rethink the friend label if he were this excited about sending her to her doom. She reached out and touched his arm, getting his attention. His head cocked to the side, the smile dimming.
“What’s up, Helen.”
“Why me?”
“You mean, why are you chosen? Why did you survive?”
She couldn’t say ‘Yes.’ For some strange reason the word was stuck in her throat. He turned to face her more fully, hunching a little so he was eye level with her. “I tried to keep you out of it. I pulled your file and sent you to the back twice, hoping we wouldn’t get to you. But…anyone we thought had a chance at surviving just kept dying. We’d open up that box and…”
He didn’t detail what he saw, but she knew. She’d experienced it. The smell of death and scorched flesh, burned hair and cooking blood. The silver walls splashed with red as if a child had taken a bucket of paint and gone nuts. Even though it was 100° outside, Helen shivered. She saw it all again: going into a large metal box with ten other women, the loud mechanical whine that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, all of it culminating in a blinding white light.
And when it was over, and she’d opened her eyes…they were all dead. Blood streamed from their noses and eyes. Their bodies limp and slouched over or sprawled on the ground as though they’d stood up, ready to open the door and escape; as if they knew they were seconds away from death and that if they could just get out that fucking metal door, they might survive.
She knew it, because she’d felt it too, the sizzling heat and destroying rays. Helen had walked out of there, the scientists and doctors watching her with wide eyes, as if they were surprised she’d survived. The only one to walk out of there. They’d sent her to a radiation detox chamber and changed her schedule. Now she was learning history, pouring tea and studying maps, and it all made sense. If going back in time made sense.
“Yeah, they died. But not you. It didn’t kill you like it does the others; your body can disperse the radiation, expel it from your cells.” Helen looked down at the ground for a moment, mind racing. The Nazis had engaged in genetic engineering since the 1940s. Once Hitler had decided that certain groups of people had no value, he could experiment on them at will. Expose them to chemicals, graft things onto them, inject them with whatever compounds they thought might make the Germans better, stronger and faster.
The US had no choice but to keep up.
Helen was a product of the genetic race. Her nerves were different from normal people because she could choose how her energy was expended. This meant she could survive in the cold for a long time. Drop her into the Arctic and she’d be able to generate her own heat; live a lot longer than most other people. One of Hitler’s top priorities was making a way for his soldiers to survive a Russian winter. And if the Nazis could do it, then the US needed to be able to do it too.
Helen could do it. Although, she wasn’t quite sure she understood how the ability to survive the cold and make her own toast meant she could travel through time.
“Okay, I have another question.”
He nodded and crossed his arms.
“Actually, I have a lot of questions. Do you think the Germans are building a time machine too?”
“Not that we’ve heard of, thank God. Two groups messing with the timeline…just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Why?”
He smirked, trying to keep things light, but she could see a tightness around his eyes, a forced smile, and it was nice to know he was sad she was going. “Oh good, I get to explain the complexities of time travel to a layperson,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm. She frowned at him. “Think of it…” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Think of it like throwing a pebble into a pond. You are the pebble, and your entry into the pond creates ripples. It takes a few days for those ripples to settle down. If we sent somebody back in time, and they sent someone…like the next day? It’s bad. Let’s leave it at that. What’s next?”
She smiled sickly, the expression quickly melting off her face. “Why don’t you just kill Hitler?” Helen asked. “Go back twenty years and pop him when he’s on the toilet somewhere?”
“Ah. That’s too dangerous. Anything under a hundred years and it risks destroying the space-time continuum.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“It means we could blow up the world.”
“That sounds bad,” Helen deadpanned, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Yeah, and…well, there are different theories of how this will work. But, we think that even if we could go back and kill Hitler…someone else would take his place. History and time are determined; we can change little things—”
“Like papers not being sold at auction.”
He nodded. “Exactly, but to take out people…no. Just…no.”
“I would also like it noted that when you say ‛we think that’s how it will work’ or that there are ‛theories’ about what may happen, it scares the crap out of me. I’d feel a lot better about this if you were certain.”
“Ditto.” He cleared his throat. “Did General Fox tell you that we can’t give you money or clothes? Not even jewelry? Only you will go through.”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing sit-ups and squats like you wouldn’t believe. If Covent Garden is going to get a visit from Lady Godiva, my ass is gonna be smokin.”
“Sorry, horses don’t go through either,” he said. Was he joking? That was the trouble with scientists, they were always so literal.
“Where will I show up?”
“We don’t know. Somewhere in London. I’ve tried to pinpoint it, but it’s not an exact science or anything.” He chuckled nervously.
What the fuck do I say to that? She balled her fists, desperate to hit something.
“I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Break into a haberdasher or something.” He gave her a confidence boosting smile. One that said she could do anything once she put her mind to it.
Jackass. “A haberdasher is for men’s clothing and hats,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Well, whatever. Find some clothes. You know what I mean. A woman’s haber-something. Anyway, I need to run some more tests before you go. Just double-check some things. If you could roll up your sleeve so I could take some blood, that’d be great.”
He led her over to a medic station in the corner of the warehouse-sized room.
She rolled up her sleeve, ready to watch him draw her blood, but pulled her arm back before he could jab her. “Am I going to make it there?” she asked, hoping he’d be honest.
He gave her a small nod. “I think so. Mathematically and scientifically speaking, you certainly should.” He reached for her arm, tugging it down and laying it flat on the table before swiping it with alcohol.
That was less than comforting. “How does it work? The time travel thing? I read the file, but it’s confusing.”
He snorted and jabbed her with the needle, her blood filling the vial quickly. “Time travel is complicated. Now there’s an understatement,” he muttered.
“Yeah, what I mean is, there are lots of different things I’ve seen, but what’s right? I
saw this show where someone goes back in time and becomes his own grandpa. Is that possible?”
He put a bandage over the pinprick on her arm and set the vials of blood on a table before answering her question. “I’m not familiar with that theory, but it doesn’t sound accurate.”
It was clear he wasn’t taking her seriously, but she didn’t know how to articulate herself any better. “Well, then…I saw this other movie, and the guy goes back in time, but he starts to disappear— gets erased from the timeline—when he kisses his mom.”
“You seem preoccupied by incest,” he said, teasing her.
Her stomach felt as if it were filled with hot lava. “I guess…what I want to know is…can I screw it up?”
“Sure. Anybody can screw up. Don’t invent anything or kill anyone. What if you kill Einstein’s dad? Will someone invent everything he does? We don’t know for sure. If you change things, we won’t know because we won’t remember how it was supposed to be. That’s why you should stick to the mission. Stopping something from being invented shouldn’t cause as much mayhem as erasing someone from the timeline. Go back, keep a low profile and only do the mission. Get the plans and destroy them. You wipe them out, and the ripple effect should be negligible. Don’t have kids, don’t get married. Don’t do anything that could change the course of someone else’s life.” Gooseflesh swept over her skin as if she were suddenly cold.
He dismissed her, telling her to get some sleep, but before she left he called her name. She turned back to look at him, and he said seriously, “And just to be safe, whatever you do, don’t sleep with your grandpa.”
“I haven’t seen how hot he is yet,” she said with a straight face.
His eyes widened.
“I’m kidding,” she said.
“Good. I was worried.”
“It’s my grandma I’m interested in.”
His eyes bugged out, and Helen couldn’t help but smile as she left, willing to enjoy even the most feeble joke if it would distract her from what she was about to do.
The next few days passed quickly and before she knew it, she was standing naked in a laboratory while thirty people stared at her from behind radiation-proof glass. Goose bumps puckered her skin, giving her frozen nipples…fripples. Was that a technical term? If it wasn’t, it should be.
Daniel escorted her to the giant egg, waiting until she sat down on the cold metal, and gave her a nod before he closed the door. Through a small window, she saw him leave the chamber and a door close behind him. A moment passed and another door, this one made of steel, came down from above, so that no radiation could possibly leak out to the people who watched. Lucky bastards. A speaker came on, and someone wished her good luck and told her to relax. Helen bit back an obscene and scathing response.
The coldness of the metal seat on her bare ass was peculiarly distracting. But it was better to focus on that, than the fact that she might be dead in the next twenty seconds. The machine began to hum, and Helen bit her lips between her teeth, determined not to beg for them to let her out. It’s an honor. You’re saving lives. Changing the course of history.
The humming changed, growing into a vibration, as though she were in a huge cargo plane, riding on top of the engine. The feeling of coldness vanished and she began to sweat, the heat licking at her like fiery tongues, and she knew that was the radiation seeping into her and absorbing into her pores. Was she imagining the sensation?
Sweat dripped off her nose, the blinding bright light forcing her to close her eyes. Her skin felt swollen, her blood hot and beginning to boil in her veins. Pressure and the scream of twisting metal surrounded her; she smelled blood, felt something trickling down her face and knew that she was just like all the others, another experiment that failed; another body to be hauled out in a plastic bag. She was dead, cooking from the outside in. She couldn’t hold it in. Couldn’t fight the flames incinerating her body.
She screamed.