Flashforward

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Theo returned to his office, the darkness of night visible through his window. All this talk of visions was disturbing—especially since he himself hadn’t had one. Could Lloyd be right? Could Theo be dead a mere twenty-one years from now? He was only twenty-seven, for God’s sake; in two decades, he’d still be well shy of fifty. He didn’t smoke—not much of a statement for any of the North Americans to make, but still an achievement among Greeks. He worked out regularly. Why on earth should he be dead so soon? There had to be another explanation for him having no vision.

  His phone bleeped. Theo picked up the handset. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” said a female voice, in English. “Is this, ah, Theodosios Procopides?” She stumbled over the name.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Kathleen DeVries,” said the woman. “I’ve been mulling over whether to phone you. I’m calling from Johannesburg.”

  “Johannesburg? You mean in South Africa?”

  “For the time being, anyway,” she said. “If the visions are to be believed, it’s going to be officially renamed Azania sometime in the next twenty-one years.”

  Theo waited silently for her to go on. After a moment, she did. “And it’s the visions that I’m calling about. You see, mine involved you.”

  Theo felt his heart racing. What wonderful news! Maybe he hadn’t had a vision of his own for whatever reason, but this woman had seen him twenty-one years hence. Of course he had to be alive then; of course, Lloyd was wrong when he said Theo would be dead.

  “Yes?” Theo said breathlessly.

  “Umm, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” said DeVries. “Can I—may I ask what your own vision showed?”

  Theo let out air. “I didn’t have one,” he said.

  “Oh. Oh, I am sorry to hear that. But—well, then, I guess it wasn’t a mistake.”

  “What wasn’t a mistake?”

  “My own vision. I was here, in my home, in Johannesburg, reading the newspaper over dinner—except it wasn’t on newsprint. It was on this thing that looked like a flat plastic sheet; some sort of computerized reader screen, I think. Anyway, the article I was reading happened to be—well, I’m sorry there’s no other way to say it. It was about your death.”

  Theo had once read a Lord Dunsany story about a man who fervently wished to see tomorrow’s newspaper today, and when he finally got his wish, was stunned to discover it contained his own obituary. The shock of seeing that was enough to kill him, news which would of course be reported in the next day’s edition. That was it; that was all—a zinger, a punch line. But this…this wasn’t tomorrow’s paper; it was a paper two decades hence.

  “My death,” repeated Theo, as though those two words had somehow been missed in his English classes.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Theo rallied a bit. “Look, how do I know this isn’t some scam or prank?”

  “I’m sorry; I knew I shouldn’t have called. I’ll be—”

  “No, no, no. Don’t hang up. In fact, please let me get your name and number. The damned call display is just showing ‘Out of Area.’ You should let me phone you back; this call must be costing you a fortune.”

  “My name, as I said, is Kathleen DeVries. I’m a nurse at a senior citizens’ home here.” She told him her phone number. “But, really, I’m glad to pay for the call. Honestly, I don’t want anything from you, and I’m not trying to trick you. But, well—look, I see people die all the time. We lose about one a week here at the home, but they’re mostly in their eighties or nineties or even their hundreds. But you—you’re going to be just forty-eight when you die, and that’s way too young. I thought by calling you up, by letting you know, maybe you could somehow prevent your own death.”

  Theo was quiet for several seconds, then, “So, does the—the obituary say what I died of?” For one bizarre moment, Theo was kind of pleased that his passing had been worthy of note in international newspapers. He almost asked if the first two words in the article happened to be “Nobel laureate.” “I know I should cut down on my cholesterol; was it a heart attack?”

  There was silence for several seconds. “Umm, Dr. Procopides, I’m sorry, I guess I should have been more clear. It’s not an obituary I was reading; it’s a news story.” He could hear her swallow. “A news story about your murder.”

  Theo fell silent. He could have repeated the word back to her incredulously. But there was no point.

  He was twenty-seven; he was in good health. As he’d been thinking a few moments ago, of course he wouldn’t be dead of natural causes in a mere twenty-one years. But—murder?

  “Dr. Procopides? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” For the time being.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Dr. Procopides. I know this must come as quite a shock.”

  Theo was quiet for a few moments longer, then: “The article you were reading—does it say who kills me?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s an unsolved crime, apparently.”

  “Well, what does the article say?”

  “I’ve written down as much of it as I remember; I can email you it, but, well, here, let me read it to you. Remember, this is a reconstruction; I think it’s pretty accurate, but I can’t guarantee every word.” She paused, cleared her throat, then went on. “The headline was, ‘Physicist Shot Dead.’”

  Shot, thought Theo. God.

  DeVries went on. “The dateline was Geneva. It said, ‘Theodosios Procopides, a Greek physicist working at CERN, the European center for particle physics, was found shot to death today. Procopides, who received his Ph.D. from Oxford, was director of the Tachyon-Tardyon Collider at—’”

  “Say that again,” said Theo.

  “The Tachyon-Tardyon Collider,” said DeVries. She was mispronouncing “tachyon,” saying it with a CH blend instead of a K sound. “I’d never heard those words before.”

  “There’s no such collider,” said Theo. “At least, not yet. Please, go on.”

  “…director of the Tachyon-Tardyon Collider at CERN. Dr. Procopides had been with CERN for twenty-three years. No motive has been suggested for the killing, but robbery has been ruled out, as Dr. Procopides’s wallet was found on him. The physicist was apparently shot sometime between noon and 1:00 P.M. local time yesterday. The investigation is continuing. Dr. Procopides is survived by his…”

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s all it said.”

  “You mean your vision ended before you finished reading the article?”

  There was a small silence. “Well, not exactly. The rest of the article was off-screen, and instead of touching the page-down button—I could clearly see such a button on the side of the reading device—I went on to select another article.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Dr. Procopides. I—the 2009 me—was interested in what the rest of the story said, but the 2030 version didn’t seem to care. I did try to will her—to will me—to touch the page-down control, but it didn’t work.”

  “So you don’t know who killed me, or why?”

  “I am sorry.”

  “And the paper you were reading—you’re sure that it was the then-current one? You know, the October 23, 2030, one.”

  “Actually, no. There was a—what would you call it? A status line? There was a status line at the top of the reader that said the date and the name of the paper quite prominently: The Johannesburg Star, Tuesday, October 22, 2030. So I guess it was yesterday’s paper, so to speak.” She paused. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

  Theo was quiet for a time, trying to digest all this. It was hard enough dealing with the fact that he might be dead in a mere twenty years, but the idea that someone might kill him was almost too much to bear.

  “Ms. DeVries, thank you,” he said. “If you recall any other details—anything at all—please, please let me know. And please do fax me the transcript you mentioned.” He gave her his fax number.

  “I will,” she said. “I—I’m sorry; you sound like a nice young man. I hope you
can figure out who did it—who’s going to do it—and find a way to prevent it.”

  6

  IT WAS NOW ALMOST MIDNIGHT. LLOYD AND Michiko were walking down the corridor toward his office when they heard Jake Horowitz’s voice calling out from an open door. “Hey, Lloyd, have a look at this.”

  They entered the room. Young Jake was standing next to a TV set. Its screen was filled with snow.

  “Snow,” said Lloyd, helpfully, as he crossed over to stand beside Jake.

  “Indeed.”

  “What channel are you trying to get?”

  “No channel. I’m playing back a tape.”

  “Of what?”

  “This happens to be the security camera at the main gatehouse to the CERN campus.” He hit the eject button; the VHS tape popped out. He replaced it with another cassette. “And this is the security camera at the Microcosm.” He hit play; the screen again filled with snow.

  “Are you sure this is the right kind of VCR?” Switzerland used the PAL recording format, and, although multistandard machines were common, there were a few NTSC-only VCRs at CERN.

  Jake nodded. “I’m sure. Took me a while to find one that would show what was actually on the tape, too—most VCRs just go to solid blue if there’s no picture signal.”

  “Well, if it’s the right kind of VCR, then there must be something wrong with the tapes.” Lloyd frowned. “Maybe there was an electromagnetic pulse associated with the—the whatever it was; it could have wiped the tapes.”

  “That was my first thought, too,” said Jake. “But watch this.” He hit the remote’s reverse button. The snow speeded up its dancing on screen, and the letters REV—the abbreviation was the same in many European languages—appeared in the upper right corner. After about half a minute, a picture suddenly appeared, showing the Microcosm Exhibit, CERN’s gallery devoted to explaining particle physics to tourists. Jake rewound the tape some more then took his finger off the button.

  “See?” he said. “That’s earlier on the tape—look at the time stamp.” In the center of the screen near the bottom, a digital readout was superimposed on the image, with the time incrementing: “16h58m22s,” “16h58m23s,” “16h58m24s”…

  “About a minute and a half before the phenomenon began,” said Jake. “If there’d been something like an EMP, it would have wiped what was already on the tape, too.”

  “So what are you saying?” asked Lloyd. “The tape goes all snowy right at the beginning of the phenomenon?” He liked Jake’s word for what had happened.

  “Yes—and it picks up again exactly one minute and forty-three seconds later. It’s the same on all the tapes I’ve checked: one minute and forty-three seconds of static.”

  “Lloyd, Jake—come quick!” It was Michiko’s voice; the two men turned around to see her beckoning to them from the doorway. They ran after her into the room next door—the lounge, which had its own TV set, still showing CNN.

  “—and of course there were hundreds of thousands of videos made during the period when people’s minds were elsewhere,” said anchor Petra Davies. “Security-camera footage, home-video cameras left running, tapes from TV studios—including our own archival tapes made right here at CNN, which the FCC requires us to produce—and more. We’d assumed they would clearly show everyone in them blacking out, and bodies collapsing to the ground—”

  Lloyd and Jake exchanged a glance. “But,” continued Davies, “none of them show anything. Or, more precisely, they show nothing but snow—black and white flecks, roiling on the screen. As far as we can tell, every video made anywhere in the world during the Flashforward shows snow for precisely one minute and forty-three seconds. Likewise, our other recording devices, such as those hooked up to the weather instruments we use in making forecasts, recorded no data during the period in which everyone blacked out. If anyone watching this does have a tape or recording made during that time that shows a picture, we’d like to hear about it. You can phone us toll-free at…”

  “Incredible,” said Lloyd. “It does make you wonder just exactly what was going on during all that time.”

  Jake nodded. “That it does.”

  “‘Flashforward,’ eh?” said Lloyd, savoring the term the newscaster had used. “That’s not a bad name for it.”

  Jake nodded. “It certainly beats ‘the CERN disaster,’ or anything like that.”

  Lloyd frowned. “That it does.”

  Theo leaned back in his office chair, hands behind his head, staring at the constellations of holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles, thinking about what that DeVries woman had said.

  It wasn’t like knowing you were going to die in an accident. If you were forewarned that you’d be hit by a car on such-and-such a street at such-and-such a time, well, then you simply had to avoid being at that place at that moment, and—voilà!—crisis averted. But if someone was hell-bent on murdering you, it would happen sooner or later. Just not being here—or wherever the murder was going to take place; the story from the Johannesburg Star didn’t actually mention the precise location—on October 21, 2030, wouldn’t necessarily be enough to save Theo.

  Dr. Procopides is survived by his…

  Survived by his what? His parents? Poppa would be eighty-two then, and Momma would be seventy-nine. Theo’s father had suffered a heart attack a few years ago, but had been scrupulous ever since about his cholesterol, giving up his saganaki and the feta-cheese salads that he so loved. Sure, they could still be alive then.

  How would Poppa take it? A father isn’t supposed to outlive his son. Would Poppa think he’d already lived a good, long time? Would he give up on life, passing on within a few more months, leaving Momma to go on all alone? Theo certainly hoped his parents would be alive in twenty-one years, but…

  Dr. Procopides is survived by his…

  …by his wife and children?

  That’s what they usually say in obituaries. By his wife—his wife Anthoula, perhaps, a nice Greek girl. That would make Poppa happy.

  Except…

  Except Theo didn’t know any nice Greek girls—or any nice girls of any nationality. At least—a thought came up, but he fought it down—at least, not any who were free.

  He had devoted himself to his work. First to getting grades good enough to go to Oxford. Next to getting his doctorate. Then to getting assigned here. Oh, there’d been women, of course—American schoolgirls back in Athens, one-night stands with other students, and even once, when in Denmark, a hooker. But he’d always thought there would be time later for love, a wife, children.

  But when would that time come?

  He had indeed wondered if the article would start “Nobel laureate.” It didn’t, but he had wondered—and, if he were honest with himself, it was a serious bit of wondering. A Nobel meant immortality; it meant being remembered forever.

  The LHC experiment that he and Lloyd had spent years crafting should have produced the Higgs; if they had produced that, the Nobel surely would have followed. But they hadn’t made the breakthrough.

  The breakthrough—as if he’d have been content with only one.

  Dead in twenty-one years. Who would remember him?

  It was all so crazy. So unbelievable.

  He was Theodosios Procopides, for God’s sake. He was immortal.

  Of course he was. Of course he was. What twenty-seven-year-old was not?

  A wife. Children. Surely the obituary had mentioned those. Surely if Ms. DeVries had only paged down, she would have seen their names, and maybe their ages.

  But wait—wait!

  How many pages in a typical big-city newspaper? Two hundred, say. How many readers? Typical circulation of a big daily might be half-a-million copies. Of course, DeVries had said she was reading yesterday’s newspaper. Still, she couldn’t have been the only one looking at that article during the two-minute glimpse of the future.

  And besides, Theo would apparently be killed here in Switzerland—the article had listed a Geneva dateline—and yet the story had made a South
African newspaper. Which meant it must have made other newspapers and newsgroups all over the world, possibly with different accounts of the events. Certainly the Tribune de Genève would have a more-detailed article. There had to be hundreds—maybe thousands—of people who had read reports of his death.

  He could advertise for them, on the Internet and in major newspapers. Find out more—and find out, for sure, whether there was any truth to what this DeVries woman had said.

  “Look at this,” said Jake Horowitz. He plunked his datapad down on Lloyd’s desk; it was showing a web page.

  “What is it?”

  “Stuff from the United States Geological Survey. Seismograph readings.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at the readings for earlier today,” said Jake.

  “Oh, my.”

  “Exactly. For almost two minutes, starting at seventeen hundred hours our time, the recorders detected nothing at all. Either they registered zero disturbances—which is impossible, the Earth is always trembling slightly, even if just from tidal interactions with the moon—or they registered no data at all. It’s just like the video cameras: no record of what was actually happening during those two minutes. And I’ve checked with various national weather services. Their weather instruments—wind speed, temperature, air pressure, and so on—recorded nothing during the Flashforward. And NASA and the ESA report dead periods in their satellite telemetry during that two-minute period, too.”

  “How could that be?” asked Lloyd.

  “I don’t know,” said Jake, running a hand through his red hair. “But somehow every camera, every sensor, every recording instrument anywhere in the world simply stopped registering while the Flashforward was occurring.”

  Theo sat at his desk in his office, a plastic Donald Duck peering down at him from atop the monitor, thinking of how to phrase what he wanted to say. He decided to be simple and direct. After all, he’d need to place the information in the form of a classified ad in hundreds of newspapers worldwide; it would cost a fortune if he wasn’t concise. He had three keyboards—a French AZERTY, an English QWERTY, and a Greek one. He was using the English one: