The LEDs lighting the room dimmed for three seconds while the temporal shifter activated, and the carbon disappeared from the chronoporter pad.
Now all that was left was to wait.
Three minutes later, Jim entered the room. He looked at the computer, at the flashing lights at the back of the device, and at Ammon.
“What’s going on, Ammon? The whole power grid of the hospital just took a three second hit.”
“Sorry,” Ammon said distractedly, “the device is resource-intensive when it comes to energy consumption. It packs a heavy hit to electrical systems – but it’s brief.”
“Well, you freaked out a lot of surgeons,” Jim said.
At that moment, Jim freaked out himself, as the empty chronoporter pad he was staring at suddenly shimmered for a moment, and a tiny lump of carbon appeared.
“What the?” he said, rubbing his eyes in disbelief.
Ammon grinned. “I did it. Four minutes exactly.” He closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank you, Esther.”
“That’s amazing,” Jim said, in awe of the materialization of matter from the past. He observed a read-out on the screen next to the chronoporter. “Look Ammon, the carbon’s emanating the same kind of quantum disturbance as your own brain. Much weaker – but it’s the same signature.”
Ammon squinted at Jim. “So, are you saying that I’ve already time traveled? If so, why don’t I remember it?”
“That’s not what I’m saying – there’s not enough data to make sense of it yet.” Jim stared at the read-out, then looked at Ammon. “So, what about the past? Can you send the carbon back to the past?”
Before Ammon could answer, the device pad shimmered, and a second lump of carbon appeared.
“Apparently so,” Ammon said with a chuckle. “I only sent it forward once – so this one must be from the future. Sent by me.”
Jim looked at the screen again. “I think you’re right,” he said. “It has the same form of radiation, but the signature is inverted. I’m new to all this, but it follows that if the first lump came from the past, this one came from the future.”
“Well,” said Ammon, “I’ll just have to be sure to send it back. Say, in ten minutes. I’ll send it back twelve minutes.”
“You already did. Or will,” said Jim. “Man, this is confusing.”
Ammon smiled. “Never mind the confusion. I’m going to get my daughter back.”
#
Over the next five days, Ammon ran a series of additional experiments, including several tests on live subjects – three lab rats Jim had brought him.
He was starting to feel stir-crazy, cooped up in this two-room suite with no windows to the outside world – and eager to send himself back in time to save his daughter and fix this tragedy.
Jim had provided a series of custom pills to help with Ammon’s nightmares, but they seemed to do little to nothing. Ammon wondered how much worse his dreams would be without the drugs.
At last, Ammon was ready to do it. Testing on the brains of the rats he’d sent through time gave him confidence that the process would leave his mind intact and healthy. Without letting Jim know he was going to do it, for fear that the doctor would attempt to talk him out of it at the last minute, Ammon set the coordinates and stepped onto the chronoporter pad. Jim had been fully supportive of the endeavor so far, but Ammon worried that Jim’s cold rationality had the potential to stand in the way of Ammon’s rash and reckless, emotion-fueled and desperate act.
Ammon knew that what he was about to attempt was extremely dangerous – but he didn’t care. Rather than have Emma wake up from her coma and feel the debilitating pain of losing their beloved Esther, Ammon wanted to fix it all, and fix it now.
He initiated the temporal translocation sequence, closed his eyes, and held his breath.
In his head, he counted down the seconds to activation.
Three…two…one.
His brain felt like ground zero at a nuclear detonation. For a fraction of a moment, Ammon could see the entire universe, and every moment of all of history. He could hear every sound in the universe, smell every aroma, taste every flavor, feel every sensation. The sheer volume of data made every cell in his head burn with the intensity of the whitest white light from a thousand suns. He wanted to cry out, but was disembodied.
The entire experience felt like it lasted both an eternity and a millisecond.
Ammon exhaled, opened his eyes, and found himself on the phone, stepping out of his car in downtown Salt Lake City.
He heard the voice of his friend, Dr. Jim Mayne.
“You’ve traveled?”
Ammon’s mind swam through the torrent of conflicting perceptions. He shook his head to clear the dizziness and concentrate on the question.
“Um, no, no – it’s not quite ready for that, yet,” he heard himself saying – though something felt wrong with that answer. He rubbed his eyes and said, “There’s um, there’s one more heavy equation I need to work out, but the rest of the bones are there – it’s all in place from an energy standpoint. I just need to put the meat on the bones and discover the way to actually control and pinpoint the temporal destination algorithm.”
Ammon checked his watch. He didn’t want to be late for this lunch appointment. He was meeting the two most important people in his life.
His two women.
He blinked hard as he stared at the watch on his wrist. The sweeping second hand was running backwards.
“Look, Jim, I gotta go – having lunch with my family. I really want you to come by tonight if you can.” He looked at his haywire watch again. “There’s something I want to show you. I’m not sure, but there’s something going on. I need your help to – to sort it out.”
“Okay, Ammon. I’m excited to see your latest breakthrough in person.”
“I gotta go,” Ammon said. “I see my wife and daughter.”
Ammon hung up, but left his earpiece in. He waved to his wife, who stood across the street waiting to cross State Street from the east, and to his daughter, who was also waiting to cross toward him, but across Broadway from the south.
He had the distinct sense that he had been here before, a feeling so strong it made him nauseous, with a deep sense of foreboding.
A second later, he heard the angry honking of horns and glanced to his right.
A red truck swerved through traffic, traveling too fast.
Suddenly, time slowed down.
The reckless speeding truck careened toward both his wife and his daughter.
Ammon looked at each of them. Almost in unison, they turned away from him to look toward the commotion of the careening truck. He noticed how alike they looked.
Then their faces each turned from joy, to shock, to horror.
Ammon’s heart leapt and sank at once.
In a moment that lasted forever, he stared at the women, and glanced back at the truck.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins.
As if prompted by an inner voice, Ammon felt compelled to save his daughter. He launched himself through the air, knocking her down. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled as they hit the ground.
The truck’s front tire barely missed Ammon’s back as it flew past. The tires screeched as the vehicle slid around the corner.
The out-of-control vehicle struck Emma square across its grill and she bounced off the hood, cracked the windshield, and landed on the ground with force.
Ammon stared as the truck disappeared up State Street to the sound of more honking horns.
The world fell silent. He could only hear his heartbeat pounding in his head.
Esther appeared fine, apart from a bloody welt on her head. Ammon gripped then released her hand, and crawled quickly across the ground toward his beloved wife.
She rested upon the ground in a contorted mess, her blank eyes staring. She was not breathing, and a pool of dark red blood was forming under her head and rolling slowly toward the gutter.
Ammon cradled his sweetheart in his arm
s and wept.
Something deep inside felt horribly wrong. Not just the death of his wife, but something else – something that felt like injustice. Like a mistake.
Why had this happened? This wasn’t supposed to happen!
But how could he possibly know what was meant to happen? How could Ammon perceive the fate of the eternal universe?
The world started to spin around Ammon.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster until it was just a blur. The droning noise rose to a crescendo, and then – nothing.
#
CHAPTER THREE
Ammon awoke to feel his own face wet with tears.
Jim Mayne stood over him.
“Ammon – how do you feel? You’ve been unconscious for nearly a day and a half. You’re healthy – we have no idea why you wouldn’t wake up.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Ammon said, trying to sit up. “Where am I? What is this place? Where are my wife and daughter?”
“Ammon, Emma didn’t make it. She died at the scene. I’m so sorry.”
Ammon swallowed hard, and his vision suddenly blurred with tears. “I know.”
“This is a special recovery suite at the University of Utah Hospital. Esther is upstairs in ICU. She suffered a head injury. Don’t worry – she’ll be fine. We just have to keep her in a chemical coma for the next week or so – while the brain swelling is reduced. Her neural scan checks out fine – she will heal completely, given enough time.”
Ammon looked around the room. “Why am I in here? I feel okay.”
“We’re keeping you here for observation. We have to keep you in this room until we’ve figured out what’s going on with your physiology.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ammon – you seem to be healthy enough, but there’s something happening with your brain – it’s producing a strange kind of quantum radiation – and it’s causing interference with time-based tech – anything with an internal chronometer goes nuts when it gets near you.”
“What?”
“Here, look at my watch – it’s running backwards – well, mostly – just from being in close proximity to your brain. It may have something to do with your time machine project. Have you used it – have you used the temporal shifter on yourself?”
Ammon hesitated, then said, “No! I’ve – I’ve only tested it on carbon. No in vivo or human tests of any kind yet.”
When he said the words, they felt hollow. In his mind, he saw flashes of a rat disappearing and reappearing on the chronoporter pad. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Well, until we figure it out,” said Jim, “we’re going to have to keep you isolated. We can’t risk taking you through the hospital and causing the equipment to wig out. You’re safe for other humans, but not the technology.”
Ammon put his head in his hands and sighed heavily. “I need my equipment. Can you go to the lab at my house, bring me all of my work? I’m so close, Jim. I could go back – go back and change this. Make it so Emma lives.”
Jim stared at his friend for a few moments. Ammon’s head spun, and he felt that intense sense of deja vu again. “Okay, Ammon – what do you need?”
“I need all of it. My computer, my notes, the white board, the device itself – and don’t forget the power supply bushings. I don’t want to cause a power surge around here.”
Jim nodded. “Listen, Ammon – about Emma. How do you want to handle the arrangements? Right now, you’re stuck here, and your daughter is in no shape to deal with anything.”
Ammon stared into the abyss. “Forget about it. There’s no need for arrangements. I’m going to undo all of this. I’m going to go back and change it. I’ll save Emma. I’ll save them both.”
Jim smiled. “Good. I will bring you the equipment. You should get some rest while I’m gone.”
“Rest? You just told me I’ve been resting for a day and a half. I’m ready to get to work.”
“The rest you got wasn’t peaceful. I looked in on you while you were asleep, and you seemed to be having nightmares.” He stood up and reached into the pocket of his lab coat. “Here, take this pill. You may get to play with time travel, but as an expert in psychiatric pharmaceuticals, I get to play with brain chemistry. This pill should give you some great rest, and help you leave those awful dreams behind.”
He handed the little gray pill to Ammon. Ammon’s stomach lurched for a moment when he reached for it – a strong déjà vu gripping him once again. “Have I – have I ever taken this pill before?”
“No – it’s brand new. I just finalized it last week. Now, get some rest while I go round up your gear.”
Within moments of Jim closing the door, the drug kicked in. Ammon laid back on the bed, closed his eyes, felt a dizzying sensation for a few moments, followed by nothingness.
#
Ammon found himself standing at his daughter’s bedside in the hospital.
“Dad, why didn’t you save us both?”
“I couldn’t. It was you or Mom. Something told me to save you.”
He looked across the room and saw his own chronoporter, the complete temporal shifter device integrated into the ICU equipment. It looked so out of place. He looked back at Esther, and she was no longer on the hospital bed.
She was standing at a grave, holding her dead mother’s hand.
“Why?” they screamed together.
A red truck came barreling through the cemetery, bouncing roughly over graves. It slammed through both Emma and Esther, revealing a giant black pit.
Ammon lost his balance and fell into the gaping maw of darkness.
Falling…falling…
Ammon woke up with a dry mouth and a sickening hunger in his stomach.
Jim was there, shaking his shoulder. “Ammon, wake up!”
Ammon lifted his weary head, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Jim. “Nice pill, Jim. I think it gave me even worse nightmares.”
“Hmm, it shouldn’t have given you nightmares. It’s designed to calm your emotions. Never mind – I have some good news. I got all your stuff together. Come see.”
Ammon rose from the bed, his joints aching. He followed his friend, who showed him to a door on the wall opposite the bed. Jim opened it and led the way into an adjoining room – windowless like the other room, but brightly-lit with rows of white LEDs across the ceiling and walls.
Ammon’s whole apparatus – the computer, the cables, and the temporal shifter’s chronoporter pad – were all set up in the center of the room, along with a table for his notes and the whiteboard displaying his scrawled equations.
Ammon gave Jim a nod. “Thanks, Jim. Now – if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”
Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “You got it, my friend. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be back to check on you, though. And if you need anything, let me know. I’m sure I could smuggle you down a guinea pig or two from the lab.”
Ammon felt a wave of nausea as his brain was attacked once more by déjà vu. He felt certain Jim had said that same exact thing before. He shook it off, and asked Jim a question.
“Can I see my daughter?”
“I’m sorry, Ammon – she’s in ICU. We can’t risk you near the equipment, given your strange condition. But I promise to take some video on my tablet and bring it with me next time I see you. Of course, she’s just lying there, but it’s something.”
“Okay,” Ammon said, still feeling a little disoriented. “Well, at least my own equipment will work. I provided the laptop and the device itself with chronovariant shielding before I even ran my first test.”
Jim moved to the door and stepped through. Looking back, he said, “I’ll see you soon, Ammon.”
#
CHAPTER FOUR
The next week was a blur for Ammon, the days blending into the nights as he worked like a madman to perfect his device. He hardly ate, and he slept only when exhaustion forced him to.
He was truly obsessed with making this time tra
vel thing work. He repeated the name of his wife over and over again as he worked on the equations.
As he continued to focus on his dear wife’s name, he suddenly saw it – the answer to his conundrum appeared in his mind, the solution found right there in the letters of her name.
Emma.
E=mma.
The energy in this equation, represented by “E” was equal to the mass squared times the acceleration. By squaring the mass, he could account for the acceleration forces for the translocation coordinates. Using this set-up, he should be able to pinpoint the quantum signature for the time travel destination perfectly.
He plugged the new equation into his program, hit enter, and watched the numbers scroll up the screen. The complex calculations accounted for all relative spatial motion over time.
After a few intense minutes, the scrolling numbers stopped, and the result was error-free.
“Yes!” he whooped.
Had he known all along? Had he chosen his wife, all those years ago, with the subconscious understanding that Emma’s name would be the key to this breakthrough? Ammon set aside this speculation and got on with the job.
Carefully, he placed ten grams of carbon on the circular chronoporter pad, and prepared the temporal shifter by punching in the newly calculated translocation coordinates.
Six minutes into the future.
Ammon initiated the system, and the LEDs in the room flickered momentarily, but the power bushings handled the surge well.
The carbon lump on the chronoporter pad shimmered and then winked out of existence.
Ammon felt like he was holding his breath as the minutes ticked away.
Five minutes later, Jim entered the room. He looked at the computer, at the flashing lights at the back of the device, and at Ammon.
“Are you doing it? Are you running a test?” he asked Ammon.
“Yes. Keep watching that pad. You’re about to be wowed.”
At that moment, the empty chronoporter pad shimmered for a moment, and sitting in the middle was the tiny time-traveling lump of carbon.
“Whoa!” said Jim.
Ammon grinned. “I did it. Six minutes exactly.” He closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank you, Emma.”
Jim observed a read-out on the screen next to the chronoporter. “Look Ammon, the carbon’s emanating the same kind of quantum disturbance as your own brain. Much weaker – but it’s the same signature.”