Going Back Cold

by Kelley Rose Waller

  He rubbed his forehead and stared around the room. MILO was still projecting onto the wall the flight vectors Jane had been analyzing.

  “Jane?” he said gently.

  She didn’t move or make a sound.

  “I think we have to zoom out,” he began. “Maybe you’re just looking at physics. This world. All you can see and observe. But you know this isn’t all there is. There’s more out there. Bigger, more, infinitely better.”

  Jane’s arms remained crossed over her chest, but she turned and Lucas could see her eyes were wet. She looked away and didn’t blink.

  “Jane, come here, please.” He reached out, but she didn’t move.

  Rising, he walked over to her. He stood beside her. Near enough to feel close, but not touching her. He wanted to avoid her pushing him away. They waited several minutes. Jane’s eyes slowly traced the different trajectories MILO showed on the wall. A wide, swooping red line. A straight blue one. A green one that curved gently. A yellow parabola. So many choices, she thought.

  “I’m not telling you to give up, Jane,” Lucas said. “In fact, I’m not telling you to do anything. But I would like to ask that you consider healing as an option. The ‘what if’ has been so hard. But ‘what if’ you decided to embrace God’s plan and live in it? ‘What if’ we decided to trust?”

  His wife didn’t respond, but he reached out and turned up her arm, reminding her again of what she had permanently scrawled there. “’What if’ we are not consumed because of the Lord’s great love? ‘What if’ His mercies really are new every morning? ‘What if’ He is still faithful?”

  After a heavy sigh, Jane reached out to hug him, and he gratefully wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “I’m trying to believe all that, Lucas,” she said into his chest. “Really, I am. But I can’t give up on her. Not yet.”

  “It isn’t giving up, Jane.”

  “Fine, she said staring up at his face. “You can call it what you want. But I’m not stopping. And frankly, I need your help with something.”

  Lucas felt his fists clench as he backed away.

  “So you believe in God, and in His authority, but you’re going to try to travel through time and change His decision anyway? And make me help you?” Lucas said, looking into her stone-cold eyes.

  Jane shrugged. “If God doesn’t like it, He’d better stop me.”

  Chapter 81

  “Whaddya say, Bonnie?” Rich asked as he entered the console room on the afternoon of the season’s second launch. They were eight weeks in, at the half-way point, and experiencing good weather. Lucas was sitting with Ana near the new meteorologist, Dr. Witmer, and Riddhi sat in the mostly empty row of chairs behind all the techs that now ran the launches.

  Riddhi’s doctors had cleared her to return to work with no restrictions in August. Her hair had grown back in and was cut short. Her appearance was altered, however the scars weren’t harsh. A few pink lines remained, which the surgeons said would continue to fade over time.

  “Hello, Rich,” Bonnie replied without looking over.

  Rich winked at Riddhi to indicate that this was the kind of response he expected. Riddhi smiled meekly but shook her head when he looked away. Their inter-personal drama is their own sad business, she thought.

  Bonnie walked the room down the series of pre-launch procedures that were now familiar. Jane didn’t even show up until they were already dialing Colonel Edwards.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Ana said. It was unclear if she was teasing or annoyed.

  “Hey, you’re the ones with work to do today,” Jane replied with forced calm as she took the seat between her friend and Lucas. “All I do in here anymore is watch and worry.”

  “Worry? Really?” Ana said, raising her eyebrows. “This is same-old, same-old. Just an instant, FTL jump to a point in space beyond Mars.”

  “How far we’ve fallen when an FTL space launch is normal,” Jane said with a forced smile. Her back was sweating so she leaned forward in the chair.

  “More like how far we’ve come,” Ana said.

  “Maybe…” Jane chuckled awkwardly and pressed the back of her hand against her cheek to cool her face. She tried to look at Lucas, but he deliberately avoided eye contact.

  As Bonnie and the Colonel exchanged greetings, the reporter Chandler Smith slipped in the door and took a seat in the corner. He stared at Jane, who ignored him and made uncomfortable small talk.

  “All right,” Bonnie said after a few moments. “Dr. Witmer, are we ready to go?”

  The meteorologist was staring at her screen with her eyebrows wrinkled. “Give me a minute.”

  “An actual minute? That’s a huge delay,” Bonnie replied.

  “Sorry, more than a second though, there’s a small delay in the routing of the—wait. Ok. I’ll punch the go-ahead on your command, and the system will auto-launch within the window.”

  “Lucky,” Ana mumbled, watching the real-time data appear instead of the delayed information she’d had the first season. I still can’t believe nothing got blown up or thrown off course with that hillbilly set-up, she thought.

  The room was silent, and finally, Bonnie asked again, “So are we ready to go?”

  “I am,” Dr. Witmer replied. “Are you waiting for anyone else?”

  “Man, we’re more buttoned up than this, usually,” Lucas said softly to Jane.

  Colonel Edwards cleared his throat on the monitor.

  “Begin the countdown, Ana,” Bonnie said.

  Ana, who had been reclining rather irreverently, leaned forward in her chair like a high schooler caught sleeping in class. “Me?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes, I like it when you do it,” Bonnie said, realizing that it was no longer Ana’s job. “It has an air of the familiar. I like the tradition.”

  “Sure, ok,” Ana said, nodding at Dr. Witmer and setting the official countdown clock. “Ten, nine…”

  When she reached ‘one’ and added her signature ‘wait for the bang,’ Dr. Witmer confirmed for the computer to initiate its final timing sequence and auto-launch at its own discretion.

  “Hopefully we’ll be precise this time,” Bonnie said over her shoulder in the general direction of the reporter who was holding a tablet but hadn’t taken a single note. Is he recording us? she thought.

  The monitors showing the view from the launch revealed the telltale blue glow as the capsule disappeared. The sonic boom vibrated the room a moment later as expected.

  “Anything to report?” Colonel Edwards asked. He seemed uncharacteristically anxious.

  Bonnie stared at the screens for a beat, then replied, “Capsule’s away, sir.”

  “Just the wait for the confirmation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a long pause as four minutes ticked by. No one stirred.

  “You know, this was more exciting when there was a catch immediately,” Edwards said on the screen, checking his watch.

  “Was it?” Bonnie said. “Maybe it felt more dramatic but it certainly wasn’t this momentous. Today, we’re almost ready to—”

  MILO’s panel in the corner of the room started flashing as Bonnie’s launch commander console began to beep. “Hang on, what’s that?” Bonnie said. Her eyes lit up, and she barked, “Jane, get over here.”

  Jane tried very hard to control her breathing. She wanted to look at Lucas but forced herself to remain casual.

  Bonnie pointed at the screen. “Did you do this?” she growled.

  Jane hesitated, and that was enough answer. Bonnie shrieked and threw her tablet on the table.

  “Calm down, Bonnie,” Edwards demanded as she stomped into the middle of the room, halting when she was toe-to-toe with Jane.

  “MILO,” Ana said, “Display the error message from Bonnie’s tablet on the main console.”

  “There is no error,” MILO’s voice replied.

  “Here,” Bonnie said, holding out her tablet. A typed message on the screen said, “Stage 1 expected 50% compl
ete.”

  “Stage 1?” Ana questioned as she read it. “That’s language from—But we aren’t—Jane? Right?”

  “Look,” Jane said, “I know we’re supposed to—”

  “What did you do?” Bonnie yelled, “You don’t get to make decisions for the entire team, Jane, for the entire project! Split Horizon isn’t a pet science project! You’re always—”

  “I know that we—” Jane started, but was interrupted.

  “Genius Jane thinks she knows better than a team of sixty cross-discipline scientists,” Bonnie said as she turned to the room, “and has ordained from on-high that we’re doing the second jump today. The nesting dolls protocol.”

  “What? How? We didn’t even launch a layered capsule,” Ana said.

  “Yes we did,” Lucas said, and Ana’s jaw dropped.

  Jane tried again to explain herself. “I just know that we only have—”

  “We? We?” Bonnie yelled, “What is wrong with you, Jane? This is why we have teams in place for billion-dollar projects!”

  “The concept was already approved by the whole team, Bon, I just—”

  “You just what? You just thought you could do everything yourself?”

  “Before you crucify anyone, let’s see what happens,” Edwards yelled, banging his finger angrily on the camera and leaving fingerprints that looked enormous on the computer monitor in Semotus. “Everybody shut up while we wait it out.”

  Three minutes later, MILO announced that Stage 1 was complete.

  “Complete?” Lucas asked, standing up and raising his hand to call for silence. The timing clock had just passed approximately twenty seconds left in the countdown. “As in successful?”

  “Confirmed. Stage 1 is complete. Imagery coming online in moments.”

  The room fell silent as the screens filled with grainy images of the capsule passing through the bay of the first space catch, the outer shell opening, and a blue haze replacing the smaller capsule as it catalyzed and executed a second jump.

  Riddhi was the first to speak. “Huh. Looks like it worked. Seamlessly, too. Not a hitch, at least in that visual.”

  Ana cleared her throat as she watched the monitor carefully. “All the numbers look good, too. All the readings are coming back as expected.” Except the timing, she thought. A nagging idea haunted her.

  “How did you know it would work?” Rich asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “What?” Riddhi asked.

  He snapped his fingers and repeated himself. “Jane. How did you know it would work?”

  “The calculations were all done,” Jane replied. “You stored them in MILO.”

  “They were only estimates,” Rich said.

  “They seemed pretty exact.”

  “Not in this game of nanoseconds,” he continued. “What about round two? I haven’t finalized that yet. How’s it not going to blow up on arrival at the second catch?”

  “Maybe it will.”

  Jane noticed Chandler Smith was writing for the first time.

  “You had no right to cut us out,” Ana said, looking angry.

  Bonnie added, “What’s your agenda here? Who are you working for?”

  “Ok, that’s a bit of a leap, Bon,” Lucas said.

  “Shut up! You’re obviously in on this!”

  “In on what, Bonnie?” Jane said, slamming her palm against the table. “I’ll tell you what we’re in on, is moving this project forward. Each year, we advance by ten percent, but the bureaucracy quadruples. This is our last year, and I want to finish the thing!”

  “You don’t have the right to take a billion dollars into your own hands, Jane!” Bonnie said.

  Colonel Edwards interrupted, his voice thin. “When will we have confirmation on the second hop’s catch?”

  “Should be sixty seconds,” Ana replied.

  “Then, in sixty-one seconds, I want that room cleared of everyone whose last name isn’t Whyse.”

  Bonnie lunged at the screen. “Are you kidding me? I’m not going anywhere!”

  “Dr. Chapman, we’ve have enough arguing for one day,” Edwards replied coolly, then turned to the rest of the group. “Someone count it down.”

  No one said anything until Riddhi finally cleared her throat and said, “Fifty seconds.”

  “If this doesn’t work, I’m leaving you in Antarctica,” Bonnie hissed.

  “And if it does?” Jane said.

  “Stop it! Be quiet!” the Colonel demanded.

  “Forty seconds,” Riddhi said.

  “What, are you dreaming of a Nobel nomination?” Bonnie hissed. “You’d fit right in there, back-stabbing and treachery go hand-in-hand with academic achievement.”

  “This isn’t back-stabbing, Bon; it’s progress,” Jane retorted.

  “Progress at whose expense? Everyone here has devoted everything to this project, and you think it’s ok to sweep in and make the final decision? To cut Ana out of her own idea?”

  “Is anyone down there still a professional?” the Colonel yelled.

  “Oh, what have you given emotionally to this project, Bonnie?” Jane continued, ignoring him. “What blood, sweat, and tears have you donated? Your leadership has been the last thing—”

  “MY leadership?”

  “How about you talk to Riddhi about giving a piece of yourself to make this successful?” Jane said.

  “Don't bring me into this,” Riddhi said, putting her hands in front of her chest.

  “Shut up, you two!” Ana finally yelled. Lucas had stood and was calmly walking up behind Jane.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  “How about you say what this is really about, Jane? How about you admit it?” Bonnie hollered.

  Jane steeled herself to throw an actual, honest-to-goodness punch if Bonnie said her daughter’s name.

  “Dr. Whyse and Dr. Chapman, sit down!” the Colonel bellowed. Bonnie obeyed, but Jane stepped closer to her boss.

  “Well, Bonnie, what is it? What am I up to?” she asked, leaning over her team leader and putting both hands on the armrests is a position of fierce dominance.

  “Twenty seconds.”

  At that moment, MILO said aloud, “Stage 2 complete. Successful capture.”

  Chapter 82

  Lucas was the first to speak in the shocked silence. “It worked.”

  “That doesn’t change anything,” Bonnie said.

  “It changes everything,” Jane replied, gleaming. “Split Horizon just changed the world. Again.”

  “Clear the room!” Colonel Edwards said. “All of you except the Whyses. Get out. Now.”

  “Sir,” Bonnie argued, “You can’t consider anything but firing them, success or not, this is no way to—”

  “Dr. Chapman, do I look like I’m in a mood to negotiate?” Edwards bellowed.

  Bonnie angled daggers at Jane but followed the rest of the crew, slamming the door behind her.

  “Do you really think he’ll fire them?” Dr. Witmer, the meteorologist, said to Ana.

  Ana rubbed her forehead while Bonnie said, “He’d better, or I’m going above him to NASA or to Congress or whatever I have to do to—”

  “Shut up, Bonnie!” Cheyenne yelled, approaching from her office. “You’re like an infant!”

  “Me?” Bonnie yelled. Her eyes searched the crowd for agreement, but the rest of the crew members seemed to fade into the grey walls.

  No one wants to take a side until they know what Colonel Edwards is saying in the other room, Ana thought.

  “I watched everything that just happened from my office,” Cheyenne said, taking a deep breath and lowering her voice. “But Edwards cut the feed after he banished all of you. I saw that the first image showed the capsule’s arrival in its little blue radiation cloud, but I don’t know what he’s going to say now either.”

  “He’s not going to fire them,” Ana said. “I mean, he can’t; it’s Jane’s grant, right? And where’s he going to send them? MacTown?”

  “It’s a grant
for the project,” Bonnie corrected with a glare and a few choice words. “No one else has made this their personal playground. What was she thinking?”

  “She was thinking she was right, obviously,” Riddhi said. “And she was. It worked.”

  “Success could have been a fluke, though,” Rich said. “It has to be duplicated for us to know for sure.”

  “She still broke the chain of command, and excluded all of us,” Bonnie said. “Don’t you even care, Ana? I mean, me, whatever, but you’re supposed to be her friend, and that was your idea!”

  Ana didn’t say anything, but Riddhi took a step closer to silently show support for Ana’s position.

  “How long do you think they’ll be in there?” Dr. Witmer asked, looking uncomfortable.

  “How long does it take to say ‘you’re fired’?” Bonnie asked as she stormed off.

  “Who knows,” Cheyenne said. “They’re in for an awfully stern lecture in the very best case scenario.”

  Rich took his glasses off and began wiping the lenses methodically on his shirt tails. When Bonnie turned the corner, he too walked off, but back toward his own lab.

  “Let me know if anything good happens,” he called over his shoulder. The rest of the crew took this as a sign and scattered back into Semotus’ many labs and hallways to gossip.

  Riddhi rolled her eyes and turned to Ana. “I don’t blame Jane a second for going around Bonnie.”

  When Ana didn’t reply, Riddhi added, “Right? What am I missing? You can’t really think Bonnie was right, Ana. You know Jane’s your friend. I’m sure she just didn’t see any other way.”

  “Do I?” Ana asked quietly. “She’s been cutting me out this entire season and now… I can see why. She never even gave me a chance to… I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s done now.”

  “It really worked?” Cheyenne asked. “Like, the capsule travelled faster than light two times? Two separate jumps?”

  “Yes,” Ana replied quietly. “Well, it did something.”

  “And you’re sad that we were successful?”

  “Not we,” Ana said. “Her. Jane. Alone. And I know it isn’t just FTL, but I’m not even sure it’s instantaneous travel anymore.”

  “You are the smartest person I’ve ever worked with,” Jane said unexpectedly appearing in the doorway. Lucas stopped beside her, looking pale.