The Far Time Incident

by Neve Maslakovic

  I winced. I had, more than once, strongly suggested to our academics that they refrain from using phrases such as self-evident, obvious, and of course when talking to visitors, donors, and journalists.

  “Because, of course,” the professor went on, making me wince again, “we can only tiptoe around in the past. We are mere visitors. Physical paths open up in a loop, permitting a walk there, a quick photo here, a minute’s worth of video footage or five minutes’ worth of eavesdropping. Perhaps even a conversation with a local, who might snicker at our outlandish accent but will soon forget about us. Our presence in the past never leaves a trace, our footprints on the path of history remain invisible.” (As I said, we all took pains to underline this fact at the drop of a hat.) “From a practical point of view, this means that it’s easy enough to move within, say, the confines of a forest, but once you leave its borders, the probability of encountering a person or situation that could be affected by your presence grows rapidly and your options diminish accordingly. Simply put, you can only go where you can.”

  I saw Officer Van Underberg jot that down. The pair of whiteboards behind the officer held maps and lists of coordinates and destinations—one of them being Norway’s island of Selja. (Dr. Edberg of the History Department was hoping to run into Sunniva herself, but her goal had thus far gone unrealized.) The whiteboards were also loaded with snapshots. Lots of snapshots. So many, in fact, that they had overflowed onto the walls (except for where the built-in wire shelves held rows of reference books), even the floor. Faces of ordinary people, caught on camera in villages and fields and battlegrounds. The subjects were usually poorly dressed, in some cases ill or underfed, and always unaware of the photographer as they went about the task of shaping their particular brick in the edifice that was History. Inequality in life had followed them here. A few of the photos might make it into the History Alive exhibition or into a journal article, but most of them wouldn’t.

  As for the photos that were destined directly for the exhibition, the ones of notable historical figures, we had an undergrad doing touch-ups and making enlargements.

  The professor got to his feet and wound his way through several of the mirrors to STEWie’s basket, with Chief Kirkland and me following and Officer Van Underberg bringing up the rear. The officer barely managed to avoid slipping on the icy patch under the platform that had been formed by the water dripping from the tank. I saw Chief Kirkland catch sight of the fish. He raised two dark eyebrows. “A zebra tilapia?”

  “An experimental one. This one has been bred to withstand environments much cooler than its usual temperate habitat. I’ve sent it on a few trips.” Dr. Rojas might have been talking about a leisurely weekend drive to the North Shore or an unhurried afternoon cross-country skiing in the woods on the east side of campus.

  “Where did the fish get to go?” the chief asked.

  “We started out with near time, the students and I. We sent the tank bobbing into the middle of Sunniva Lake of last August, then brought it back. Then into Sunniva Lake of 1890, the year the school first opened. Since those two runs went off without a hitch, we then jumped—so to speak—into the fifth century. Far time.”

  “Far time? Near time?” Chief Kirkland asked as Officer Van Underberg furiously took notes, his neat block letters degenerating into hasty scribbles as he cupped his notepad in his right hand and wrote with his left, his boots firmly planted on the chilly lab floor.

  “Near time is what we call the past two, three hundred years, a time period for which we have reasonably accurate historical accounts and maps, making it relatively simple to find landing sites—entrances to the maze. Calculations are fast, ghost zones are easily avoided, and location errors, both temporal and physical, are small. For example, Chief Kirkland, if you told me that you wanted to snap a photo of the Declaration of Independence being signed, I wouldn’t send you to July fourth of 1776.” He chuckled and cracked the first smile I’d seen on his face since Dr. Mooney’s accident.

  I shook my head. I was having trouble getting used to the thought that it wasn’t an accident.

  Dr. Rojas went on. “Though that was the day the Continental Congress approved the wording of the declaration, the formal signing didn’t take place until early August. So we’d want to send you there almost a full month later. Now getting you into the chambers of the State House in Philadelphia, well, that would require some real thought and planning…” He drifted off into contemplation of the problem.

  “And far time?” Chief Kirkland inquired in the manner of one who was becoming accustomed to dealing with academic types.

  “If you go a few hundred years into the past—sooner for some places, Minnesota being of them, much further back for others—well, things start to get complicated. Far time. Maps are vague, or simply wrong, or don’t exist. Dates are, at best, educated guesses. Historical accounts are inaccurate, exaggerated, or wedded to myth and folklore. Ghost zones become more of a danger. Depending on what part of the world and era you want to go to, we usually end up making a best guess for where STEWie’s basket can land safely.” I saw Officer Van Underberg scribble down, Far time: maps vague, ghost zones a danger.

  “So how did the zebra tilapia do in far time?” I asked.

  “The fifth-century trip to Sunniva Lake—it was bigger then, by the way—didn’t take. There must have been someone in a canoe or on the banks of the lake, watching. Instead we did a somewhat wild and quick run into 10,000 BC, when this area consisted of mostly ice fields.”

  “What did the tilapia think of all that?” asked Officer Van Underberg. He sent a sympathetic look in the direction of the fish. He hadn’t seen it eat, of course.

  “It seemed to get crabbier. Not because it didn’t like the tour of Sunniva Lake through history, I think, but because we kept jerking it back. It seemed to enjoy being deposited, tank and all, just below the lake surface and then slowly popping to the top each time. At least it always came back with its stripes looking a bit brighter.”

  Chief Kirkland reminded us of the event that had caused us to gather in the TTE lab. “And you’re saying someone purposely sent Dr. Mooney into a ghost zone. A nuclear test site, something like that?”

  “Also known as death zones, cracks in time, and temporal quicksand. The landing zones that are easiest to get to—places where your presence won’t leave much of a trace. Of course, it won’t leave much of you, either. When a destination is decided on, the computer sifts through maps, photos, historical records, geological data, data from past runs, archeological archives, and so on until it finds a safe landing site like a forest—making sure to avoid forest fires and blizzards and such. Obviously this is easier to accomplish in near time than it is in far time. If someone disengaged the safety protocols we have in place—that is, bypassed the calibration which ensures that the next day’s run has a safe landing site…well.” He added after a moment, “On occasion we’ve sent our wheeled mobile robot to check for hazards or undertake the journey instead of human travelers. There is an inherent problem with sending WMRs, though.”

  “And that is?” the chief asked.

  “They don’t exactly blend in. It’s not like the WMR can throw on a cloak and a pair of sandals. Plus, they’re not great at deciding what makes a good photo and what doesn’t.”

  “Even so, why didn’t you use the robot for your Sunniva Lake tests instead of the fish? Because it’s not waterproof?” the chief asked.

  “Well, yes, the WMR isn’t waterproof, as it happens. But that’s not it. Our WMR had an—it had an accident last month. We’re building a new one.” Somewhat reluctantly, Dr. Rojas continued the story for Chief Kirkland and Officer Van Underberg’s benefit (I already knew it). “We sent the WMR to pre-Beagle Galapagos Islands for a Biology Department project, but the robot, uh—it sank on arrival. It zoomed right into the water and kept on going until it became wedged between two large boulders on the ocean floor. We sent someone after it, but it was no use. Come to think of it, the WMR is pro
bably still there at the bottom of the Pacific three hundred years later, rusting.”

  Chief Kirkland threw a glance in the direction of the fish. “And the night he was scattered across time, Dr. Mooney, having volunteered to take Kamal Ahmad’s place, came to the lab to oversee the calibration for Dr. Baumgartner’s eighteenth-century France trip.”

  “Not much to it, really. Just making sure the program doesn’t get hung up. It can be indecisive sometimes when it needs to make a choice.”

  “And instead Dr. Mooney stepped into STEWie’s basket… willingly or unwillingly. And then someone—”

  “Sent him on a trip to nowhere.”

  Dr. Rojas leaned against the frame of STEWie’s basket, causing the zebra tilapia to charge angrily in his direction. He backed up and spoke with pride of the complex arrangement of steel and reflective glass that dominated the cavernous lab. “The laser-mirror array is STEWie’s heart and soul. Would you like a short lecture on the theory behind STEWie’s being, Chief Kirkland, starting with the basic physics of spacetime warping by light—?”

  “Perhaps later,” the chief said smoothly. “You found evidence of sabotage, you say?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes.”

  “Which ghost zone was it?” I asked.

  The professor shook his head. “No way to tell. Does it matter, Julia?”

  “I’d like to know, that’s all.”

  Dr. Rojas went on. “I wasted a week checking STEWie mirror by mirror and laser by laser…then with the fish. My underlying assumption was erroneous.”

  “You assumed that it was an equipment malfunction?” the chief prodded him.

  “Exactly. It wasn’t. Someone moved the mirrors into a random position after Xavier’s run, overwriting the original coordinates.” In a rare display of emotion, sounding almost angry with himself, he went on. “Xavier was responsible for the practical side of things—perhaps I should have let Dr. Little or Dr. Baumgartner assist me, like they offered. Too many cooks, I thought. Maybe they would have found the answer sooner. You might want to get Dr. Little in here, Chief Kirkland, to see if he can glean something further from the computer.”

  “Let’s hold off on that. I don’t want to call in Dr. Little just yet.” The security chief circled STEWie’s basket, causing the zebra tilapia to mimic his movements and thinking out loud in short, choppy sentences as he paced. “Clothes folded onto a chair. Personal effects placed in the locker. Office undisturbed… Why do all of that? To mislead us into thinking Dr. Mooney went willingly?”

  “His didgeridoo is missing,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?” the security chief stopped and turned his square jaw in my direction.

  “Aboriginal Australian musical instrument, traditionally made from a eucalyptus tree hollowed out by termites,” I explained. “About four feet long. Makes a deep, rhythmic drone when blown into. Traditionally played by men. Xavier was given one as a present on one of his journeys to far-time Australia—he had a talent for finding nooks and crannies in History where he could interact with locals. He’d been practicing in his free time, and he got quite good. He played for us at the Thanksgiving party, remember that, Dr. Rojas?”

  Officer Van Underberg was penciling down didgeridoo but had some trouble with the spelling.

  “And it’s missing?” Chief Kirkland prodded me.

  The implication hit me suddenly. “You think someone struck Xavier on the head with the didgeridoo and tossed both it and him into STEWie’s basket? And left his wallet and other things behind to make it look like the professor went willingly?” An unwelcome image entered my mind. Had someone made the professor disrobe before making him climb into STEWie’s basket? I found the thought very disturbing.

  “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I think may have happened,” the chief said grimly.

  It was my turn to think out loud. “We’ve had problems with people outside the school who believe STEWie is dangerous, that it can change history in unexpected ways—which, as Dr. Rojas has pointed out, it can’t. Rarely does a day go by when the dean’s office doesn’t receive a letter or phone call or fax or e-mail or text message insisting that the program be shut down. Sometimes they come by in person to tell us these things, though not often—one benefit of being rather out of the way.” I added, “We also get the opposite—people who want to go into the past to stalk their favorite historical figure. We try to discourage them as gently as we can. Popular historical figures are often the most difficult to get near, anyway—remember, Dr. Rojas, the time Kamal tried to get close enough to talk to Gandhi for a class project? He couldn’t get within a mile of him. It was almost like Gandhi was more aware of the people in his surroundings than the average person—the good guys tend to be that way.” I went on. “We also get the occasional enthusiast with a pet theory, like that aliens built the pyramids or that the Titanic was sunk by an errant torpedo or that the Moon landing never took place, that kind of thing.” (For the Moon landing hoax, I liked to turn them away by quoting Dr. Tyson, astrophysicist and director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium: “Atop three thousand pounds of rocket fuel, where else do you think they were going?”) I added, “But it’s not likely a stranger would have managed to get past Oscar. Plus they would have needed the security code to get into the TTE lab.”

  “So it’s impossible to change the past,” said Chief Kirkland, emphasizing the last three words, “even if someone hijacked STEWie for their own ends? You’re sure about that?”

  “Not that it hasn’t been tried, mind you. We tried it ourselves, in fact.” Dr Rojas sighed. “We made an attempt to rescue the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria and the Mayan books burned by the conquistadors, but for the most part failed miserably. We were only able to make a few photographic copies. For good or bad, the burning of those books had deeply impacted history and could not be reversed.”

  “I’d like to get a feel for how it works,” Chief Kirkland said.

  “History?” Dr. Rojas asked.

  “STEWie.”

  “You mean you want to see a test run with the zebra tilapia? I suppose we could do that, it’s just that all the test runs are getting expensive, what with the power drain by the cooling equipment—and I’ve used up so much thorium already—not to mention that the floor is getting wet and slippery—”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “For people, too, not just fish?”

  “Oh, it’s safe.” Dr. Rojas waved any concerns aside. “No reason not to return the tilapia to the Genetics Department and bring STEWie back online. We can restart runs tomorrow.”

  “Dr. Baumgartner has the first slot on the roster,” I said. “I can ask her if she’d be willing to let you observe her run, Chief Kirkland, though there’ll be a blogger coming to do just that, so it might get a bit awkward if you still want to keep the story from getting out.”

  In its tank on the platform, the zebra tilapia was suddenly looking rather dark bluish and swimming around in an angry burst of activity. I realized why. The squeak of the doors had announced Abigail and Kamal’s presence; they’d ambled over to the tank without offering to share any of their not-very-nutritious lunch of popcorn with the fish. They were pretending not to notice us, though I suspected Jacob Jacobson had passed on the news that something unusual was going on in the lab.

  I cleared my throat. Abigail and Kamal turned in unison, pretending to be surprised to see Chief Kirkland, Officer Van Underberg, and me in the lab talking to Dr. Rojas. Abigail offered us her popcorn.

  “No, thank you, miss,” Officer Van Underberg said in a serious tone, though his caramel mustache crinkled a bit. “I’m on duty.”

  I accepted some popcorn (the ham sandwich hadn’t been very filling, not with all the exercise I’d gotten trekking around the science buildings with the budget forms) then sent Abigail and Kamal back to the grad student office. They had a right to know what was going on, but not yet. Chief Kirkland’s gaze followed the students as they filed out. I
hoped he didn’t suspect them of any wrongdoing.

  After the lab doors creaked shut behind Abigail and Kamal, the security chief spoke into the room over the sound of a science dean’s assistant trying to discreetly crunch popcorn.

  “You misunderstood me before,” the chief said to Dr. Rojas. “I wasn’t suggesting that I observe a run. I’d like to go on one.”

  I quickly swallowed a mouthful of popcorn, almost choking on it.

  “You want to go on a test run, Chief Kirkland?” Dr. Rojas asked, raising two thick, graying eyebrows.

  “I want to go, too,” I heard myself say.

  7

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. I don’t know what had gotten into me, where that had come from. I disposed of the last of the popcorn in the trash can, wiped my palms against each other, then turned back. “Sorry. What I meant to say was this. Dean Sunder has requested that I accompany Chief Kirkland on his investigations. I interpret that”—I coughed, perhaps because of a popcorn kernel stuck in my throat—“as including STEWie’s basket and anywhere it happens to go while Chief Kirkland is in it.”

  Chief Kirkland raised a hand. “There has already been one incident. It might not be safe, Ms. Olsen—”

  “Nonsense,” I said briskly. “You heard what Dr. Rojas said. It’s perfectly safe. Besides, you’ll need a team to go with you. We can hardly send students along on an official investigation.”

  “I volunteer,” Kamal said from behind me.

  “Me, too,” said Abigail.

  “And I do, too,” said Jacob, “though I haven’t been on a run yet, so I don’t know what use I’ll be.”

  “Didn’t I send you all back to your office?” I asked, a bit exasperated. Apparently the sound of the creaking door had signaled Jacob’s reentry, not Abigail and Kamal’s departure. We’d been too preoccupied with the chief’s unexpected request to notice.