The Return

“Well, you gave it,” Leland said. “So what are you waiting for now?”

  Shawn couldn’t believe this whole exchange was actually taking place. “Miles,” he pleaded, “please just put down the gun.”

  Miles ignored Shawn and regarded Leland with confusion. “I don’t get it. Do you want me to end your life?”

  “I don’t have a life. But you woke me up from a pretty nice dream, and you might send me back there forever if you pull that trigger. But you won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause you’re a scared kid.”

  “You’ll see just how I scared I am when I blow your fuckin’ brains out.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Miles tried to steady the gun, but his hand was shaking.

  “Come on,” Leland said. “Shoot me.”

  “No,” Shawn begged. “Miles, don’t do it.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Leland. “He’s just like the nut jobs in your town, worships me even more than they do. Show him. Show everyone. I’m ready when you are.”

  “I’m not fuckin’ around,” Miles said, his voice strained.

  “But you are,” Leland said. “So get your shit together and man the fuck up. Steady your hand. Raise the gun higher.”

  Miles raised the gun a little, though steadying his hand was apparently beyond him right now.

  “Now go ahead. If you have the balls, do it.”

  Leland waited. Miles’s frustration appeared to be mounting as his fingers seemed unable to move, even as his index fixer hovered right over the trigger. After a few more seconds, Leland smiled.

  “See? And you know why you can’t? Because you’re also just like the nut jobs in your town. You think I’m something special, and you’re afraid of me. Pathetic. You should just pack up your shit and go right back to your cult, ’cause that’s exactly where you belong. But first, you need to give me back my gun and get the fuck—”

  The pistol went off with a loud blast. Shawn screamed and briefly covered his eyes with his hand. When he removed it, he gasped at the shocking, grisly scene before him. Leland stood in place, while Miles staggered backward, blood pumping out of his chest. The gun slid out of his open hand and onto the floor with a hard thud. Miles, his face full of confusion, looked at Leland and then at Shawn and remained on his feet only a few seconds longer before his legs buckled out from underneath him and he collapsed to the ground, landing on his side. His eyes went blank as a dark puddle formed beneath him.

  Shawn stared at Miles’s body in horror. He looked back up at Leland. The man was physically untouched. As far as Shawn could tell, the bullet had simply ricocheted off his chest, like a handball bouncing off a brick wall, right back into Miles. Leland bent down beside Shawn’s body and retrieved the gun. Shawn stared at him.

  “We’ve got to clean up this mess,” Leland said.

  Shawn didn’t move.

  “Now,” Leland said, flashing him a serious look. “We can’t leave any trace of this behind.”

  “You knew,” Shawn said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You knew what would happen when he tried to shoot you. That’s why you goaded him into doing it. You knew.”

  “He came in here to shoot me, and he did. Don’t think he wouldn’t have told the whole world we were here.”

  “And we would already be gone, so who gives a shit? He didn’t have to die.”

  “I didn’t pull the trigger.”

  Shawn clutched his hair with both hands and stared down at his feet, taking deep breaths. “Holy fuck,” he whispered, almost laughing, and looked right back up. “You told him to raise the gun higher, to steady his hand. You were measuring. The distance between you guys, the angle, the velocity—you were making it inevitable that the bullet would bounce right at him.”

  “He was trying to kill me. Maybe you forgot that part.”

  “But he couldn’t have hurt you at all, could he? Jesus, can anyone?” Shawn looked Leland over top to bottom. “What are you? Did they do this to you?”

  Leland gave no answer.

  “What the hell are you?” Shawn demanded.

  Leland just stared back at him. “The shed in back of the house,” he said. “Let’s see if it has any shovels.”

  By the pale moonlight, Shawn and Leland buried Miles behind the house, between the shed and the start of the wooded trail. Neither spoke. When they’d finished, they returned upstairs and used wipes, clothing, soap, and bottles of water to remove any visible trace of what had happened. As for Miles’s belongings, they decided to leave them in the basement, untouched. Even if those items could be traced back to Miles, it wouldn’t mean that much to anyone besides his family, unless it was already known that Miles was dead.

  Leland decided they should stick to the plan and wait until morning to leave so they could do a final search of the house by daylight and make sure nothing incriminating had been left behind. There were only a few hours left before dawn, and Shawn decided to spend the rest of the night on the sofa in the library. He knew there was no way he’d be able to fall asleep upstairs.

  As it turned out, he wasn’t able to sleep in the library, either, and instead found himself just staring up through the darkness at what he could make out of the chandelier. Occasionally, he would close his eyes, but every time he did, the images he saw started them open again.

  At some point, Leland entered the library, as well, and Shawn watched in silence as Leland approached a shelf, removed a book, and sat down on one of the armchairs. At first, Shawn wondered how Leland would be able to read in the dark, but this was answered by a soft sound he realized was Leland rubbing the pages with his fingers.

  Perhaps, Shawn thought, Leland also hadn’t been able to sleep after what he’d done to Miles, or rather, what he’d tricked Miles into doing to himself. But he quickly dismissed this idea. Leland wasn’t the type to be kept awake by a guilty conscience. He watched him for a few moments in silence, then sat up on the sofa. Leland gave no reaction to Shawn’s movement, though he’d surely heard him.

  “You were picked up in the desert,” said Shawn. “Ambius interrogated you. Why did you let them take you? You could have gotten away at any time—that’s obvious now.”

  Leland looked at him through the darkness and shrugged. By the moonlight streaming in, each could make out the other’s shape, but not much else.

  “Maybe I was like you,” said Leland. “Thought I could tell them the truth. And then, when I actually met Ambius and saw who they were, and what they wanted me to do for them, and what they wanted to do to me if I refused, I understood why the whole galaxy had cut ties with our world long ago.”

  “So what happened? You killed your interrogators and fled?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Does Ambius know that you’re … different?”

  “By now, I’ve taken out about four of five of their hit squads, so they should have some idea.”

  “So then why do they keep coming after you?”

  “The same reason they do everything: hubris.”

  “And that’s why you think even if they knew what the other planet was planning, they’d still try to take down the shield.”

  “Yes.”

  Shawn was silent for a few moments, and Leland was about to go back to his book.

  “Okay,” Shawn suddenly said. “Well, here’s what I think. Maybe you’re right. Maybe if Ambius knew what you and I knew, it would make no difference at all and they’d still take down the shield and just aim to strike the aliens first. But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe they’d take a step back and reconsider removing the one thing that protects our planet from being destroyed. And maybe that’s what you’re really afraid of. Because deep down, maybe you really want Ambius to take down the shield. And you want your old friends to come at us and do whatever it is they’re gonna do. God only knows why. Maybe you’re so bitter you think we deserve what’s coming. Fuck if I know. But if Ambius finds out the truth and decides against taking down
the shield, nothing will happen. In fact, even if Ambius chooses to take down the shield anyway and just try to strike first, like you say they would, they’ll be prepared now and, who knows, maybe they’ll actually succeed. And maybe you’re scared of that, too. I don’t know. This could all be bullshit, but still, when I really think about it, I can’t help but wonder: Whose side are you really on?”

  Leland closed his book and turned his whole body in Shawn’s direction. “Whose side am I on?”

  Shawn said nothing.

  “Whose side am I?” Leland repeated, his voice louder and thick with scorn. “You listen to me, you fucking fanboy. My ‘old friends,’ as you call them, wanted me to take down that shield so they could finish off this shitty planet of ours, and I should have done it, but I refused, so I had to flee or die. I left my home, gave up everything we had there, because I couldn’t bring myself to help them wipe out seven billion people. And I come back here to the world I saved, and what beautiful thanks do I get? A secret government agency tries to torture me into doing exactly the same thing I’d refused to do up there, and then I’ve got to run again and be chased and hunted like a fucking rabbit for all time. And you have the gall to ask me whose side I’m on? You gave Ambius the technology to disable my shield, the only thing that was keeping us safe. You fucked it all up, not me.”

  When Leland finished speaking, he was breathing heavily. Shawn wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him display so much emotion. “‘Everything we had there,’” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What?”

  “You said before you gave up ‘everything we had there.’ Who’s ‘we’?”

  Leland stared at Shawn through the darkness. “You and I are done talking.”

  * * *

  In the early morning, after one final inspection of the house, Shawn and Leland packed all their belongings into the Honda and rode out. An hour later, they were already getting close to Sedona, their next destination. As Leland silently commanded the wheel, Shawn stared out at the passing scenery, the stretches of dark green forestry and the hazy, overlapping mountains in the distance. Once upon a time, as recently as Shawn’s trip with Rachel to Northwestern, the American landscape had represented a special kind of freedom to Shawn. Now, it was nothing more than a symbol of his fugitive existence, his exile from civilization.

  He had made up his mind. If he ever had any doubts before, Miles’s death and the role Leland had played in it had proved once and for all what he’d suspected all along: that Andrew Leland was ultimately a man out for himself, indifferent to anyone and anything but his own survival. Miles’s life had meant nothing to him, and Shawn’s own life likely meant little more. Leland had once given up everything to do the right thing and the world had burned him, and now he was going to watch the world burn. But if the man was morally repugnant, he was right about one thing: Shawn had indeed fucked everything up. Now, he was going to make things right.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dr. Elliot Lepore took another sip of water and leaned back in toward the microphone, inspired by a half-forgotten anecdote, now resurfaced, that was just what he needed to lighten the mood.

  “There’s actually a story about Einstein that illustrates where we’re at pretty perfectly,” he said, an impish smile crossing his lips. “A student came to him during a final exam and said, ‘Professor, the questions on this year’s exam are the same questions from last year’s exam!’ And Einstein, he looked at the student and said, ‘Yes, but this year, the answers are all different!’”

  The audience laughed, and Dr. Lepore noticed that even Dr. Burke was smiling. So did he hold no grudge over Lepore’s having alluded to Murata’s stinging critique of him several minutes earlier? Lepore certainly hadn’t meant to insult him, but hadn’t Feingold, the conference chair, told him there was no need for kid gloves with anyone as established as Burke—or humble reverence, for that matter? And the audience that filled that convocation hall in the Marriott that evening surely hadn’t come to see two acclaimed scientists kiss each other’s asses.

  Still, Lepore didn’t need anyone as influential as Dr. Roland Burke for an enemy. The reference to Murata had been a fuckup.

  “I think we have time for one more question,” the evening’s moderator, a popular science blogger, informed everyone.

  A thick middle-aged woman with funky turquoise glasses was selected from the crowd and handed the cordless mic.

  “Thank you so much for you time tonight, Drs. Burke and Lepore,” she began. “You both mentioned earlier the Scharnhorst effect, which, as you know, has some implications for faster-than-light travel. I was wondering if either of you could comment on the recent rumors that scientists at NASA have begun conducting actual tests on warp drive? And if the rumors are true … well, do you think time travel might be just around the corner?”

  The moderator turned to Dr. Lepore.

  “Dr. Lepore, do you want to field this one first?”

  “Would be my pleasure.” Lepore looked out into the crowd and smiled widely. “Well, first of all, I want to say a few things about these supposed ‘warp drive tests.’ I have some friends at NASA—I’m sure Dr. Burke does, too—and these tests are extremely preliminary, to say the least. But, you know, either way, there are a great many challenges—many would say insurmountable challenges—to achieving warp drive. From what I understand, all these current experiments are based on an Alcubierre drive or bubble, and I think physicists like Jose Nataro have done a great job at poking some holes in the feasibility of that method. And you’ve also got Sean Carroll’s assessment that, even if you could somehow get this going, the costs for the antimatter alone would be equivalent to something like the whole world’s entire economic output for forty years. So, you know, we’re talking about some expensive science.

  “But I really want to focus on the second part of your question, time travel, which is kind of a separate beast, though I guess you’re working off Everett’s theory about using warp bubbles to go back in time. I want you to know that Stephen Hawking conducted a recent test on time travel. That’s right. A test! He threw a party in his home for time travelers, and he didn’t send out invitations for the party until after it had ended. Well, he sat there with wine and cheese and balloons—you can watch the videos online—and nobody showed up. So there you’ve got ‘experimental evidence’ that time travel isn’t real! But, you know, seriously, the real reason—the actual reason—we know it can’t happen is because it violates the causality principle. If you could go back in time, then you could theoretically kill your own grandfather before your father was born and then, well, how did you just kill your grandfather if you’ve suddenly never existed in the first place? Right? I’m sure you’ve heard that one before. It’s a paradox, and the universe does not like paradoxes. So something will always happen to prevent them from occurring. As Hawking himself says, it might be radiation in a wormhole destroying the wormhole or virtual particles turning into real particles, but whatever happens, the universe will find some way to prevent paradoxes and the ensuing chaos they’d create. We call this the chronology protection conjecture, and it means that time travel, at least into the past, is really impossible. But, you know, if I’m wrong, please let me know yesterday!”

  This last line drew a couple of laughs and more than a few groans. The moderator gestured to Dr. Burke, who stepped up to the microphone and adjusted his small rectangular Santa glasses.

  “Is time travel possible?” he began. “Novikov, with his theory of self-consistency, thinks it is. Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, with their work on quantum tunneling, seem to think it is. Kip Thorne thinks it might be, and Stephen Hawking thinks no, or probably not, and Marcus Scheck thinks no, definitely not. Is time travel possible? I have no idea. I would like to think we’re working our way toward it, but I can’t say for sure. It’s not my area, and without having poured countless hours into studying the works of these scientists or all the various attempts at unifying relativity and quant
um mechanics, I won’t pretend I can give you an answer. But here’s what I do know. The universe does not ‘dislike paradoxes,’ nor will the universe ‘find a way’ to prevent them. That’s plainly and simply horseshit. The universe does not have agency. It doesn’t have likes, dislikes, and it most certainly does not have fears. It doesn’t stay up at night worrying about you or your grandfather, and it’s not afraid of descending into chaos. Only people like Dr. Lepore are afraid of the universe descending into chaos. They might not know what that would look like or even mean, but it obviously scares the shit out of them.

  “What would happen if I tried to go back in time to kill my grandfather? That’s a great question, and if and when I’m able to do that, I suppose we’ll find out! But what won’t happen is that existence itself will suddenly cave in just because the universe got so confused that its brain exploded. The universe, which has no brain, is simply unable to give a rat’s ass what you or I do. It’s there, existing, and yes, it has laws, but it doesn’t do anything. We make the choices, we take the actions, and we are lord and master of our own futures.

  “That said, I don’t really consider Dr. Lepore to be exactly wrong in his views. When faced with great and historic scientific challenges, there are always those who say it cannot be done. And when they say, ‘We can’t do it,’ they’re in at least one respect correct. When it finally happens, they will surely have had nothing to do with it.”

  After the debate had ended and the crowd had finally filed out, Dr. Burke took a seat at the hotel bar, where he was shortly thereafter joined by an attractive young woman. Anyone who saw them there would have naturally assumed an interview was being conducted; the woman was leaning forward, holding out a small digital voice recorder, and the two were chatting amiably. That the machine wasn’t actually recording or that it was Burke who was asking the questions or that Rachel wasn’t actually a journalist wasn’t information anyone else needed to know.

  “So what’s the good word? Are you through with the coherence tests?” Burke asked, changing the subject from her commute to the reason she was there as the bartender poured him a glass of Glenfiddich.