by Josh Karnes
* * *
They spent the better part of the afternoon putting together their data time capsule with all of the notes and information they could find. They made a duplicate of their server’s hard drive so they could run the control system to conduct the test. With any luck, the duplicate hard disk would wind up back on the shelf where it came from and the original would be back in the server immediately when they did the test.
Laurie reformatted the server’s hard drive and installed a simple Linux OS so it would boot up and then display the following message:
Daedalus Team:
This is not a glitch. Do not attempt to remediate.
This message is for the following people: Larry Duncan, Kyle Martin, Laurie Carter
The fact that you are reading this stands as evidence that Daedalus is working in an uncontrolled time loop of indeterminate time. On May 9, 2016, this message was written and all of the data on this hard drive was added. The hard drive itself was put into Daedalus’ portal on that same date. If you are reading this at a time before this date, then it indicates a time loop has been formed and you can estimate the time offset.
The team is in the midst of investigating the apparent disappearance of carbon cubes which have been put into the portal with the intent of moving them one meter across the lab. The working theory is that these cubes also are in a time loop and we will not be able to find them. We have determined that a hard disk drive was a suitable test subject that allows us to send information that may endure the trip back in time, if that is what is happening.
The previous contents of this hard drive have been replaced with the current contents. DO NOT DELETE THIS DATA. A full set of our notes and other information is included on this hard drive, so that you may avoid whichever error we have encountered that is causing the time loop.
Once the hard drive was prepared with the correct data, Kyle prepared to put it into the portal.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Kyle said as he placed the hard drive in the portal, and what was far and away the largest and most complex object they had ever considered putting into the portal disappeared before their eyes.
Just as the hard drive vanished, Laurie had a faint deja vu. Didn’t we have to replace a crashed hard disk in that server a couple of years ago? She wondered why she hadn’t remembered that earlier, but she decided it was not important.
Larry Duncan smirked when he said, “I was about to say ‘now, we wait’, but then I realized that it’s quite the opposite.”