“Sounds like fun. Did you win?”
“Of course, hun, Indy always beats the Nazis.”
“Very good then, Docta Chones,” Jane added with a flourish. Lucas responded by smiling and pulling her into his lap to kiss her behind her ear.
“You were up so late last night,” he said. “Get work done?”
“Work?” Jane said, slightly flustered. “I was just playing with Sebbie’s game.”
Lucas looked at her hard for a moment, but she interrupted his stare, playfully asking, “So what are we doing today, Dr. Whyse?”
His face flickered for a minute before he replied, “Cataloging robot parts, Dr. Whyse.”
“That sounds fascinating, Dr. Whyse,” she said with her head on his shoulder. Lucas enjoyed the peaceful moment alone with Jane until she spoke again.
“Confession?” Jane said.
“Shoot.”
“I thought… I thought maybe I was pregnant this week.”
Lucas felt his heart wrench and his hands get clammy. “You thought?”
“I’m not though. Confirmed today. I just… it feels like it’s been forever. This trying. The waiting sucks.”
Lucas opened his dry mouth to speak, but didn’t have any words. He just held his wife tightly and let the clock tick.
“Lucas?”
“Yes?”
“How come it’s easy to relax and let other people be in charge here, but I can’t relax and let God be in charge of life?”
“Jane, if there was an easy answer to that, you’d be ahead of the game.”
“I mean, here we are, relaxed when a group of strangers thousands of miles away are about to manage something that we’ve been working towards for like eight years, and we’re calm. But when it comes to opening our hands before the Creator of the universe, we’re like, ‘No thanks, I can probably do this without you.’”
“Ironic,” he nodded.
“It is. I wish there was a way to get my heart to feel what my head swears it knows.”
“It hasn’t been a fun lesson to learn,” Lucas said quietly.
“No,” Jane agreed.
After a moment, she spoke again. “Would you change it?”
“Change what?” he asked.
“Change… the outcome. Would you say it was worth it? Losing her to gain a deeper understanding of who God is.”
“Come on, Jane, I don’t think that’s the point.”
“No?”
“A lot of people think God punishes us or teaches us lessons like a mean schoolteacher with a switch,” he said, “But you and I both know that isn’t it at all.” Lucas paused and looked around. “If I’m not living my life for a purpose, for something bigger than me or you or scientific exploration, if now is all there is and we’re gone when we die, what’s the point?”
“So, you’d say, yes, then,” she said. “You’d choose knowing God better at any cost.”
“No,” he replied, putting his hand on her shoulder, “I’d say, knowing God better despite the cost. Choosing to view my life circumstances through the lens of His glory. His unending love. His inestimable plan. The easy route is falling into despair, a lack of faith, and anger. The hard route is coming out two years later and somehow feeling whole.”
“So that’s where you are today?”
“No,” he said. “But I wish for that. I strive for that ideal.”
Jane sighed and leaned her head back against him.
“Jane?”
“Yes?”
“Are you working on something new?”
She paused, but finally offered, “Maybe.”
“Will you tell me about it when you’re ready?”
She nodded silently. After a few minutes, he reached for her arm and pushed the sleeve up to reveal the beautiful lettering on the underside of her forearm. “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed,” he read.
Jane completed the verse that was on his shoulder by memory. “His compassions never fail; they are new every morning.”
Great is your faithfulness, she thought as her eyes got hot. Please, God, I want to believe.
Chapter 61
“So, Lucas, what are we sending up this time?” Colonel Edwards asked through the monitor. They had just finished all their pre-flight checks and were settling in for the final big moments of their first space launch.
“Well, a heck of a lot more than just an encyclopedia,” Lucas replied. “I'm sending up Lord of the Rings.”
“Really? That's longer than a set of encyclopedias?”
“Well, I'm sending up the video files,” he explained. “HD. The extended edition.”
“What? That's got to be more than a day of video!” the Colonel said. “How large is it?”
“It's like half a terabyte.”
“We can do that?”
“It's already loaded into the antiferromagnet. We just have to send it to Mars now.”
“Well, the catch today is about the distance to Mars at its closest point, but that’s not where the planetary alignment is currently,” Bonnie said.
Lucas smiled. “Figure of speech, I guess, but especially inaccurate in this case. Either way, some poor Martians are headed for Mount Doom.”
“But way past the moon at any orbit,” Cheyenne said.
“Definitely.”
Bonnie cleared her throat, and Lucas gave a mild finger salute to say goodbye to the Colonel as she retook control of the room.
“We're ready when you are, Florida,” she announced. “Let's get this show on the road.”
“Sure, Bonnie, they'll just hit the 'go' button,” Rich muttered.
She inhaled sharply but didn't respond.
“Roger, we're at T-minus 4 minutes, 15 seconds,” the launch commander at Cape Canaveral said good-naturedly. “Good luck.”
“Ok, everyone,” Cheyenne laughed. “Let's send the hobbits to space.”
“Oh for goodness sake,” Ana said. “As if the world didn't already think scientists were nerds.”
“Hey! Nerds are cool now!” Lucas said as the group in The Dome made their final nervous calculations.
“Ana, how's the weather looking?” Bonnie asked as she checked off protocols on her tablet.
“Cold.”
“And?” Bonnie raised her hands, waiting for more details.
“And well outside where we need to be to maintain the Néel temperature for the magnet,” Ana said.
“Thank you for confirming,” Bonnie said, tapping her finger on the screen. “Rich? Lucas? Are we ok to begin the final confirmations for countdown?”
“Good by me.”
“Agreed.”
“Good,” Bonnie announced. “Everyone begin your final prep. We are at T-minus one minute.”
“Why is the launch starting to smoke?” Jane interrupted with a furrowed brow, leaning her head toward the video monitor.
“Is it hot today?” someone suggested.
“Not funny!” Ana said. “Who did the final check on the new vacuum chamber?”
“Is this worrisome enough for an abort?” Bonnie said, her tone rising. “We're at 50 seconds. Kill it or stop complaining, Ana.”
“I checked the capsule myself, along with Kenji and Rich,” Lucas said, leaning forward and looking uncomfortable. “There was nothing unusual.”
“Who checked the chamber?” Jane asked.
“Me, everything was spot on,” Rich said.
“Are we killing it?” Bonnie repeated. “Yes or no, Ana?”
“Jane?” Ana said.
“Thirty seconds!” Bonnie said.
“MILO, did something overheat” Jane asked.
Ana banged buttons while Bonnie sweated in the background. Lucas and Rich were hunched over Ana's monitor, trying to read and analyze the results the screen showed.
“Hmm… the pressure and temp look good...” Lucas mumbled as the numbers scrolled by.
“Ana, in eighteen seconds, it's going start engaging the gems. Cut it or launc
h?” Bonnie said.
“There's just nothing here in the data to indicate an issue,” Lucas said, raising his hands. “Could it be the cameras or something?”
“I don't—Well, other than the visual I’m seeing, there’s no reason not to proceed,” Jane added, gesturing to the screen.
Ana nodded. “Then, we're a go. Nine seconds...”
As the countdown wound down to Ana’s quotable ‘wait for the bang,’ she added, “Let’s hope it’s a good one.”
Lucas reached for Jane's shoulder and held on.
Chapter 62
“Well, we aren't dead,” Bonnie said a moment later. “So good call, Dr. McDell.”
“Now we wait five minutes to hear what happened on the other end,” Colonel Edwards said from Florida as NASA opened VOX again. “That was awfully exciting, and I don't mean that as a compliment.”
“Sorry, sir,” Ana said, standing up. “I wanted to be sure I had all the information before I made the call.”
“I understand,” Edwards replied. “But we don't like guessing with millions of dollars of equipment. Bonnie, maybe you'd better figure out what the haze was. Smoke, steam. We ought to know right away.”
“Of course, sir,” Bonnie replied. “Jane?”
“I'm on it. I'll be back before the confirmation radio signal reaches us anyway. Lucas? Rich?”
“Coming,” Lucas replied as he and Rich rose to follow. “Can you page Kenji?”
“How do you know when the signal will arrive?” Cheyenne asked.
“We know the exact distance to the catch, and radio waves always travel at the same speed,” Ana explained, “so the signal from the catch satellite will tell us either success or failure.”
“There’s the countdown,” Jane said, pointing to numbers on the wall. She synched her watch so she would know exactly when to be back in the room for the big moment.
Less than five minutes to know if you changed the world, she thought.
The group jogged down the hallways towards the launch. Kenji was already standing at the door when they arrived, holding a bag of supplies.
“What did I do?” he asked.
“We don't know what happened,” Jane replied. “We've got... four minutes and 18 seconds to look before we'll know if we blew our chance with NASA.”
“Oh, goodie,” Kenji replied, looking pale.
“How's it looking in the chamber, MILO?” Lucas asked.
“Temperature normal,” the computer replied. “No toxins present. You are clear to open the hatch.”
“What was the analysis in the vacuum chamber upon launch?” Lucas continued.
Silence.
“MILO?” Lucas said.
The computer chirped.
“What was the analysis of the vacuum chamber upon launch?” he repeated.
“Specify,” MILO responded.
“What was the temperature at launch?”
“Unrecorded.”
“What? Why? What was the pressure? Anything in the chamber that shouldn’t have been?”
“Unrecorded.”
“MILO, why wasn't the data collected?” Lucas asked, annoyed.
“Sensor malfunction,” the computer replied.
“What? Why?” Jane said, her hand on the hatch release but unmoving.
“Could the vibrations or something have shaken the sensors?” Rich asked.
“They're made to take it; that's what they're designed for,” Lucas said. “And the sonic boom wouldn’t have even travelled the inch or whatever to the sensors before the FTL capsule was long gone.”
“All right, open the door, Jane,” Rich said, standing upright. “We're down to three minutes, and I'm not missing the moment in the console room if we make history.”
“MILO says it's safe now, at least,” Jane said, looking to Lucas for confirmation. When he nodded, she opened the door.
“It doesn't smell like smoke,” Kenji said.
“Everybody take a section,” Jane said. “Do you have the— thanks.” Kenji handed Jane the bag, and she distributed various calibrators and tools to seek out condensation.
For a few minutes, the group worked in silence.
“One minute,” Jane said, noting the countdown on her watch. “Anything?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“What would we really see in such a fast check?” Kenji said. “I can stay and keep looking while you guys go back.”
“We'll take it apart piece by piece before we launch again,” Jane said, “so you may as well keep looking around. Just don't move anything if you can help it.”
The three scientists ran back to the console room, appearing with just eight seconds remaining on Jane's countdown.
Three seconds later, they got the confirmation signal.
Chapter 63
“Oh no,” Jane said over the loud cheers in the room. “The timing… It—”
“What?” Lucas said, trying to lean in to hear her words.
“That's history, folks!” Colonel Edwards yelled over the monitor. “That's July 4, December 7, whatever you want to call it! Write it down for your memoir.”
Images from the satellite catch began to download, showing the safely arrived capsule engulfed in its signature blue glow.
“Congratulations, sir,” Bonnie said.
“Congratulations to all of you, Split Horizon,” he said, leaning into the camera. Spotting her in the back, Edwards frowned. “Jane? What's wrong?”
When Jane didn't reply, he said, “Bonnie, ask her why she looks concerned. What did I miss?”
“Why aren’t you celebrating, Jane?” Bonnie asked in reproach.
“Well, the…” Jane mumbled as she verified that her watch was synchronized to the main timer on the computer, and it was. The room’s tone was starting to change as people were noticing Jane’s concern.
“Sorry, guys, this is totally awesome!” Jane cheered, tossing her hands in the air. Turning to Bonnie, she added, “Didn’t mean to kill the mood! Sorry, I was just thinking poor Kenji was missing all of this. Be right back!”
Lucas followed Jane into the hallway, giving a few high-fives on his way out.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked quietly. Jane's face was back to revealing concern instead of what he'd known was a false elation.
“The timing’s off by so much,” Jane whispered, pulling him into a nearby corner. “We were five full seconds early. I didn’t think it would be that much.”
“So that means we’re even faster than we thought, right? Like before?”
“No, think about it,” Jane replied, looking around and lowering her voice. “In those minutes, we weren’t waiting on the capsule to travel. That was all time after the capsule’s journey. We were waiting on the radio waves to travel back, and there’s an exact distance and an exact, constant speed of travel for that signal.”
“Right,” Lucas said, tilting his head. “So what does that mean?”
“So, it isn’t that it was faster. It’s that the confirmation radio signal left the catch before the capsule left earth.”
“Oh,” Lucas said, frowning. “A malfunction.”
“Um, no,” Jane said, shaking her head. “Remember this morning how you asked me to tell you about my new thing I was working on?”
He nodded.
“Well, I’m telling you now.”
“Ok,” he said, “Tell me.
“I did.”
“It obviously didn’t arrive before it left. So if it wasn’t a malfunction, what are the other possibilities?”
“Lu, you’re not listening,” Jane said. “That is what happened. The confirmation radio signal left the catch before the capsule left earth.”
“Sabotage?” Lucas asked. “Are you falsifying the signal to guarantee a successful test? I don’t get it.”
“Lu, I’m telling you… I’m telling you I’ve been working on this for a while. Since last year, or even before that,” Jane stammered. “We achieved FTL at first, but we
’re beyond that now. We’re into… something new.”
“And that is?”
“I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure it would really work. I may have grown up watching Doctor Who but this is real.”
“What’s real, Jane? You haven’t told me what happened.”
“Yes, I did, Lucas. The confirmation radio signal left the catch before the capsule left earth.”
“So it was a glitch?”
“Come on, Lucas, listen to me!” Jane lowered her voice further and nearly whispered the words. “I’m talking about time travel. The capsule travelled the distance but arrived before it left.”
“Whoa, Jane,” Lucas said, raising his hands up to calm her. “Come on, you’re making about a million and a half assumptions here, not to mention turning physics inside out. It can’t be in two places at once.”
“Lu, we turned physics inside out in year one.”
He stared at her.
“I’m way past that,” she said. “Physics hates me. I broke physics.”
“Jane, I can’t believe how serious you sound.”
“Lucas, I—I hypothesized this was going to happen,” she confessed. “There’s science behind this, trust me. I predicted—I mean, I’m not just tossing out some idea that popped into my head when my watch didn’t match MILO’s timing. This was a plan, just not five full seconds the first time. I mean, I thought maybe I could jump it a nanosecond in time and people would just round off.”
“Jane!” Lucas was somehow yelling in shock using only a secretive whisper. “What? What are you even saying?”
“I guess that was arrogant, thinking they wouldn’t notice. But I certainly didn’t expect five seconds. Five seconds…”
“Jane! Listen to yourself. If you’ve been manipulating a billion-dollar government without telling anyone, we could be in a lot of trouble. Not to mention if you’re right, this sounds like a really bad idea. Haven’t you seen Donnie Darko? Terminator? Back to the Future? Are you kidding me?”
“Yes,” she said, “and I’m not talking sci-fi time travel, Lu, where naked people materialize on the corner after a lightning bolt shower, thirty years in the past. But I am telling you I’m fairly certain I just sent our loaf-of-French-bread-sized capsule back in time five seconds.”
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