Going Back Cold

by Kelley Rose Waller

  “I wondered,” Hal replied, taking a sip of his coffee. “She certainly isn’t herself lately.”

  “Lately? It’s this whole month. We’ve been here over four weeks now. She’s inseparable from that laptop and barely talks.”

  “She talks to Sebbie and Lucas,” Hal said. “And hasn't she always been a hard worker?”

  Cheyenne sighed.

  “I don’t think she’s sleeping.”

  “Can you ask MILO?” Hal suggested.

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I can’t, but I bet Candace can ask about her sleep. MILO won't tell me anything about her. I already tried to mirror her laptop screen a few times, but it locked me out.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I'm supposed to be able to do it, yes, to anything electronic on the base as the administrator. But not her laptop. I emailed IT to look into it.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “Has Bonnie said anything about Jane?” Hal asked after taking a sip of water.

  “No,” Cheyenne said, waving as Ana walked into the cafeteria. “But then, she wouldn’t. In fact, from what Ana’s said, her work is stellar. Better than ever. Out-geniusing her own genius. But you can tell she’s a zombie, right?”

  “I’ll try to talk to Lucas. See what’s wrong,” Hal offered.

  Cheyenne smiled. “That’s not what I was getting at, but thanks. I could talk to Lucas myself.”

  “True,” he said. “But I’ll still try. Anyway, thanks for the dinner conversation, but I need to go get the snowmobiles tuned up before tomorrow morning. Peter and I are taking that new weather doctor out to the robot farm.”

  Cheyenne laughed. “Hal, you have the best way of talking about what we do down here.”

  “Thank you, honey,” he smiled. “By the way, if you want to have dinner in privacy next time, we can always eat in your room.”

  Cheyenne felt herself blushing and laughed. “Awfully forward, aren’t you, pilot?

  “I’d invite you to mine, but men’s rooms always smell like feet.”

  “Men’s rooms?”

  “Quarters, whatever. I’m definitely not eating in the bathroom down here. Good Lord.”

  Hal smiled and squeezed her shoulder as he walked away, taking her empty tray and leaving her alone with her coffee and her thoughts.

  On the other side of the cafeteria, Ana loudly dropped a notebook on the table in front of Jane.

  Jane looked up, surprised. “What?”

  “Oh you heard that, did you? I just asked you a question twice and for the thousandth time, you acted like I wasn’t in the room,” Ana said in a very raised voice.

  “Ana, I’m sorry,” Jane said in surprise. “I just didn’t hear you.” The cafeteria had fallen silent, but most of those who were eating tried to stare at their plates.

  “No, Jane, you ignored me. That isn’t the same thing.”

  Jane’s face turned red. “I said I’m sorry.”

  Ana came around to the same side of the table, and Jane clicked the laptop lid shut.

  “Ok,” Ana said, fuming and throwing her hands up in the air. “You may be the lead physicist here, but we are all on the team. How about including me in whatever you’re doing?”

  Cheyenne walked over to intervene, but before she spoke, MILO did. “Doctor Jane Whyse, there is a call for you on Colonel Edwards’ secure line.”

  Jane sighed and looked at her colleague. “Look, Ana, I’m sorry. I’m just doing what I can to help the team.”

  “Sure,” Ana answered, putting a hand on her hip. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing then? I’m not stupid, Jane, I know your work isn’t backed up on MILO. I checked, and you’ve only clocked like 12 hours of login time each week this season. You’re doing a huge amount of work off the record somehow.”

  “Really?” Jane said, genuinely surprised. “You’re spying on me?”

  “Jane, we’re supposed to be a team! What are you doing?”

  “Right now,” Jane replied, turning to leave, “I’m going to answer the Colonel’s phone call.”

  Chapter 77

  “Hey MILO, page Peter for me, would you please?” Hal asked from his quarters a few minutes later.

  A chirp sounded, then Peter’s voice. “What is it, boss?”

  “You ready to clean the bikes?”

  “Sure, I’ll be right down.”

  “No rush, finish your dinner,” Hal said.

  “Ok, thanks. Give me ten minutes?”

  “See you then,” Hal answered.

  He punched in his code, grabbed his keys from the bedside table, and turned to go. He jumped a little when he saw Lucas was standing inside the doorway.

  “GEEZ, buddy, you almost gave me a heart attack!” Hal said, grabbing his chest for dramatic effect.

  “Sorry,” Lucas said. “I didn’t mean to follow you.”

  “You ok?”

  “I, uh, I—” Lucas started, but didn’t seem to have a thought.

  “Sit down; let’s talk,” Hal said, pushing the door closed. He pulled out the desk chair for his guest and sat down on the edge of his bed.

  They made small talk for a few minutes. Hal relayed that he was going out to the meteorological robots the next day, and Lucas gave a brief, unscientific summary of his tasks for the week. After silence had hung for a moment, Lucas started to talk.

  “I think everyone knows that this year is weird,” he began. “For Jane.”

  “Well, I could say I hadn’t noticed, but… I mean, we all just saw that dinner conversation,” Hal confessed. “Did something happen?”

  “No. Well, yes, but I mean nothing new. It’s our daughter, Hal. She thought… she thinks—” Lucas stopped talking as he fought back raw emotion.

  Hal felt uncomfortable but wanted to give him space to continue. Men aren’t supposed to have heart-to-hearts, he thought to himself as he waffled between patting Lucas’s shoulder or just sitting tight. Fortunately, Lucas continued speaking before he’d made contact, so he put his raised hand back down on his own knee.

  “I don’t think we can keep going,” he said.

  “Oh,” Hal said, nodding. “I... I’m really sorry, Lucas. I know it’s been real tough on you guys each year coming back.”

  “I just don’t know what to do, Hal. She’s starting to change things, and she isn’t listening to me now. She isn't sleeping. She's so hyperfocused on parenting Sebbie perfectly that it's freaking me out. It's inhuman. It's like penance or something. She's consumed with succeeding. She’s possessed with this idea—this idea, this thing that she’s going to do. It's all she thinks about.”

  “Doing what?” Hal asked.

  “I don’t know, the science is all at her level… she thinks she… oh, Hal, you’re going to think she’s nuts. She thinks she can time travel.” Lucas exhaled forcefully and slumped back into the chair.

  Hal stared in silence at his friend, mulling the idea over. He didn’t say anything.

  Finally, Lucas kept talking. “I… she… it’s the capsule. We were having these timing issues, and the more I pressed her on it, the more I realized she wasn’t surprised. She’s been—it’s like she’s working from another angle since we came back the second year. She is still trying to get FTL, but she thinks that she can make a time jump. I don’t understand the physics, but she’s sure she can do it.”

  “In what?” Hal asked, trying to hide any sarcasm. “I mean, like the capsule’s so small. How?”

  “No, no, not going back herself. Just sending the information. We’re transmitting huge amounts of data inside the capsule each time.”

  “What would she say?”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

  Hal frowned. “What does she want to tell you? In the past? I don’t understand.”

  “Hal, she wants to tell us to save our daughter,” Lucas said, opening his palms as if this should have been obvious.

  Hal interlocked his fingers behind his head and leaned b
ack. He held Lucas’s gaze but said nothing. Finally, Lucas asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, can she? That’s what I’m thinking. Can she do it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s all so theoretical, but if anyone can, she is awfully… determined. But I don’t know if that’s even the right question.”

  “What is the right question, then?” Hal asked.

  “Should she do it?”

  Hal leaned forward this time, folding his hands in his lap and looking at his shoes. “I guess that is what all the movies are about. What else changes, does anyone get hurt and all that.”

  “Well, maybe. I mean, of course, yes,” Lucas said, leaning forward. “But, I just mean, at what point are we using science to try and replace the Creator? And is it ok for us to determine that we’re going to re-do something He already ordained?”

  Hal’s mouth felt dry. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lucas. I'm not... This is the kind of question someone would come to you to ask, not to me. I'm just... this isn't my territory, son.”

  “Tell me not to play God!” Lucas said, standing up. “I don’t know, Hal. I didn’t mean to unload all this onto you, but I can’t carry all this. I’m guilty and I’m excited and I don’t deal well with secrets. I feel like my wife is reaching out toward Pandora’s box, and I’m just standing behind her waffling. I’m supposed to be a leader, and, here I am... and I can’t decide if I should stop her or not.”

  “What does she think will happen?” Hal asked.

  Lucas sighed and rubbed his forehead. “One of the nurses... one of the nurses in the delivery room, afterwards. We were holding her, her little body. In a pink blanket. They put a little hat on her, and they wrapped her up. You almost couldn’t tell, like she was sleeping. And one of the nurses in the hallway said, ‘if only they’d known and delivered her earlier.’ And I know Jane heard it. And that was all it took.”

  “She’s been planning since then?”

  “I think so,” Lucas said with a nod. “I think she'd imagined maybe time travel could be a possibility with this technology but hadn't said anything, because that wasn't the goal. FTL was the goal.”

  “But then her goals changed.”

  “Yes, her brother came in the next day to visit us,” Lucas said. “Remember that little green laptop they always played on? She asked him to get Sebbie that to occupy him, but she asked him to soup it up like crazy when she thought I wasn’t listening. That little thing has 192 gigs of RAM and processors you wouldn't believe. It’s a literal supercomputer.”

  “So she wasn’t playing games,” Hal said, shaking his head. “I figured as much, but I hoped maybe support groups online or something.”

  “She was working where MILO couldn’t see. That was the only electronic thing not connected on the entire base,” he explained. “But this year, she installed some kind of blocker-filter thing that breaks all our mission protocols on her own laptop because she thought people were getting suspicious.”

  Hal rubbed his palms together. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lucas. I’d ask ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ but I think the answer is that you don’t even know. Almost anything.”

  Lucas nodded. “And that’s not all I’m afraid of. What if it does work? I mean, seriously, Jane is a genius. What if it works? What happens to us? To this?” Lucas grabbed the skin on his arm and pinched it. “I'm made in the image of God, but I'm not living in His established order anymore? I mean, Hal! Is that possible? I’ve got to stop her.”

  “How will you do that?” the pilot asked. “Is that why you told me? So I can tell Cheyenne? Or talk to Jane?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said, pressing his fist into his forehead. “I think I told you so I wouldn’t lose my mind. But saying it out loud makes me more sure that I have to stop her.”

  “Is this really about what's unknown, Lucas?”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas asked. “Of course. How can we walk a path when we don’t know where it leads?”

  “Now, I’m just saying, maybe it isn’t about what you don’t know with this science as much as what you do know about your life. Here. Now.”

  “Meaning?” Lucas asked, looking up.

  “Meaning, I think you’ve done a fair bit of healthy healing as a dad,” Hal offered. “And a great deal of growing as a man. And not that anyone would ever say pain and loss is worth it, but maybe, just maybe, three-or-so years later, you feel equipped to live again.”

  He waited, but Lucas didn’t say anything.

  “Trust me, Lucas,” Hal continued. “I’m not telling you that I think you shouldn’t do everything to save your kid. By all means, devote your life to keeping Sebbie safe. I just think maybe the reason you’re having a hard time with this is that something inside of you is simply at peace, and that peace is telling you that you don’t have to build a DeLorean and get a do-over. That it's already done.”

  Lucas tucked his chin into his collar bone and his body shook several times as he tried to reign in his emotions.

  “Does it make me a bad father?” he asked softly. “I still love Emily. I still miss her. But how can Jane want to give up everything now for what might have been?”

  Silence descended as Hal shook his head slowly. Lucas’s lips were moving, and Hal knew he was praying. He reached out and put his hand on his younger friend’s shoulder. Amazed at the pain and the wisdom he saw conflicted in his friend’s decision, Hal prayed aloud for the first time he could recall.

  “God,” he said, “Lucas lives his whole life to do what you want. He takes good care of his family, and it hasn’t been easy. So now, we do ask you, God, to help him be a leader here. It isn’t easy. Help Jane to see the truth, too. God, we commit Split Horizon once again to your wisdom.”

  After a pause, Lucas sat up and patted his friend’s forearm as Hal put his hand back into his own lap.

  “Thanks, Hal. I think I know what needs to happen.”

  “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, Lucas. Don’t put all this on yourself. If Jane wants to be a god, you’re going to have a hard time stopping her.”

  “I have to try, Hal.”

  “I know, Lucas, and it’s your life. I’ll just offer one piece of advice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you stop her by taking it away… if you break something, tell someone to stop her, or remove the option somehow, she’ll never forgive you. You have to give her the opportunity to change her own mind. She has to believe it and decide to change her course. She has to find peace.”

  I know, Lucas thought as he nodded and left.

  Chapter 78

  Reporter Chandler Smith was unimpressed by the summary answers Bonnie Chapman was giving him.

  “So it’s an estimate?” he asked after their first launch of the season. The launch itself had gone smoothly, a positive since the watching audience in the States was continually growing.

  “What is?” Bonnie responded, annoyed.

  “Well, you said the space catch will receive the capsule you just launched and immediately signal us a confirmation which takes about eight minutes to get here.”

  “Right.”

  “So do you not know where the catch is exactly?”

  “Of course we do!” Bonnie said. “We know where they all are. Today, we aimed for a standard catch that will stop the capsule at what we believe may be the technology’s limit for a single jump. We also have one up there, a bit closer, that’s the center stage for a future two-hop test.”

  “Look, Dr. Chapman, I’m a science reporter. I have a Master’s degree, and I taught AP physics. So stop patronizing me. I’ll ask questions if I have them, but please assume I have better than an everyday citizen’s understanding of what you’re talking about.”

  “Then what’s your question?” Bonnie asked, irritated.

  “If you know the speed of your capsule getting there makes it essentially instantaneous, and we all know radio waves travel at
a constant speed, how do you not know the exact moment that a confirmation or failure signal will arrive?”

  Bonnie sighed. “We’ve had some anomalies in the timing. Did Colonel Edwards tell you to quiz me or something, Mr. Smith? We’re breaking new frontiers every time we do this experiment, do you understand? No one has ever come close to these speeds. We’re making our own equipment to just record the information, let alone quantify the data. So forgive me if we aren’t as specific as your readers at E! Weekly expect.”

  Chandler smiled and stifled an eye roll. What an alpha dog, he thought to himself. He looked around the room and noticed that everyone’s eyes were riveted to their screens. He made a mental note of the phrase 'prison-style authority' and sat back down.

  He jotted down a few notes on the environment while the timer counted down: the number of staff present, where they sat, how many computers, the sounds they made. He always tried to provide a thorough picture for his readers. His editor would remove all but the barest essentials, of course, at least for the print version, but he was often allowed to run the longer version of his stories in the online edition or on his blog.

  “One minute until signal reception,” a woman announced.

  “Thank you, Ana,” Bonnie said.

  Chandler watched as Dr. Jane Whyse fidgeted in her chair. She's an interesting case, he thought. She’d said she didn’t want to be interviewed ‘after what happened with Candace’s personal info in the press.’ Chandler would’ve understood that, actually, except he knew she was lying. His instincts said Jane Whyse didn’t mind a little attention for the right reason. She was quick to speak up, even against Bonnie, when the Colonel was on the line.

  Wonder what she knows that Bonnie doesn’t, he thought.

  A bunch of lights on the room's monitors all turned green at the same time. “Confirmation,” Ana’s voice said, interrupting his thoughts. “A successful catch.”

  There were sporadic cheers. The timer on the wall was gone by the time he thought to look for it, but Chandler checked his own watch.

  The Colonel offered a few sentences of congratulations before he and his team watching remotely signed off, but it was clear that the launches were pretty standard procedure. I guess there’s proof that any job can become routine, he thought, raising his eyebrows.