Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  They were in a small, spherical chamber, and the heavy door was already swinging shut behind them. The faint whir of spinning turbines came to them now, resonating from the bowels of the earth with a palpable vibration that gathered strength with each passing moment. A pump began to operate somewhere and they felt their ears pop as the outer door sealed behind them and the chamber added pressure. They instinctively turned to face the last barrier between them and the Arch. It was a another massive metal door, split down the middle with a single seam—the final safety lock. The two halves would slide open any moment now.

  “Power at 100 percent,” said Kelly over the intercom. “Everything all right down there?”

  “We’re all yours,” said Paul.

  “Well don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?”

  Paul smiled. It was another of their favorite catch phrases, the warp and woof of a long friendship. Kelly spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now…On my mark…And you are good to go!”

  The titanium-steel alloy split asunder as the two halves of the final barrier slipped open with a metallic whisk. They found themselves staring down an iridescent corridor, broken at intervals by gleaming arches of pulsating light. The final Arch was brilliantly lit with a chaotic radiance of color and movement.

  “Put your headdress on, professor!” Paul had to shout over the torrential sound resonating in the narrow passage.

  “What if we miss the target, Paul?” Nordhausen gave him a wide-eyed look. “What if we miss it by fifty years?”

  “No time for that, Robert!” Paul squinted into the scintillating sheen of light and motion in the Arch. They started forward, eyes fixed on a thick yellow line painted in the place where the last metal barrier had stood. Once they crossed that line they would be a few short steps from the event horizon of a tiny black hole. The spin-out of the entire quantum phenomenon was the only thing keeping them from being sucked into oblivion now. It was an elegantly simple effect that seemed to hold true because of the odd interaction of gravity and centrifugal force. Just as one could put a finger into the heart of a whirlpool and not get wet, and again like the dead space of calm in the eye of a hurricane, the interaction of quantum gravity conferred the same benefit to a spinning black hole. Here, in the sacred sanctuary created by the Arch, the annihilating effects of the singularity at the heart of the black hole were tamed and rendered harmless. It was all in the spin; all in the incredible vortex of energy and light, that swirled around them as they stepped over the line.

  Paul felt Robert groping for him in the whirling storm of light, and the two men locked arms. Somehow the simple grasp of another human being made the last few steps possible for them. The final, brilliant span of the Arch loomed ahead of them and they felt their skin tingling as with the prickle of a thousand needles. There was no pain—only the strange sensation that something was permeating the entire fabric of their being, rending them through with the cold, penetrating gaze of eternity. It was suddenly very cold, and a violet haze seemed to enfold them. They were under the Arch. Infinity yawned, and the two men slipped through into the void.

  9

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs - 2:25 AM

  Maeve gave Kelly a furtive glance as she stepped past him to the Main console. Jen extended the telephone receiver, a question in her eyes when she saw how Maeve received it so tentatively, as if uncertain or fearful in some way. Maeve put the receiver to her ear, listening for a moment before she spoke.

  “Mother?” she said at last, her voice breaking a bit, a look of anguish on her face.

  “Is that you, Maeve?” The old woman’s voice seemed distant and remote, fading in and out as if it were carried on a wireless signal.

  “Are you there?” She waited, hearing a faint wash of static on the line before her mother’s voice emerged, a barely discernable whisper, as though from another world.

  “I’m frightened, Maeve… I’m frightened.”

  “Where are you, mother? Are you home? Are you in bed, dear?”

  Something interposed itself between them, a shadow, thin and insubstantial, yet palpable in its effect. The overhead lights flickered for a moment and Maeve was distracted by the sound of Paul’s voice emanating from the intercom.

  “We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”

  “Roger that,” Kelly’s was all business, his eyes focused on the main power flow panels, arms extended as he began toggling switches and twisting dials. Maeve listened at the receiver, but static masked the connection. She covered the mouthpiece briefly and whispered something at Kelly.

  “Maeve says to check your pockets and all.” Kelly passed the message on through his console microphone.

  “Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul’s voice returned with a strange southern twang to it, and she knew that he was reaching out to Kelly in their secret language, a mythology of long steeped friendship that passed between them as a silly, effortless banter.

  “Power at 100 percent,” Kelly informed. “Everything all right down there?”

  “We’re all yours,” said Paul.

  “Well, don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?” Kelly smiled as he spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now…On my mark…And you are good to go!”

  The static on the telephone increased, and Maeve tried to talk through it, urging her mother to wait a moment. Her eyes were glued to Kelly, watching his animated movements at the main console. He snapped his fingers, waving at Jen to take a seat next to him on the targeting vector readout.

  “Watch that color bar,” he said quickly. “Let me know what it’s reading.” His eyes were scanning the bright phosphorous displays on the panels, the green numbers reflecting onto his face and forehead until it seemed that his brain was being flooded by an endless digital stream of ones and zeros.

  “Looking good…looking good…” he intonated his inner assessment of the data stream, making minor adjustments to the spin stabilization unit. “What’s the bar showing?” A quick glance at Jen brought her to life and she focused on her read-out panels, a bit flustered but comforted as her training kicked in and she fetched a reflexive status call from memory.

  “Three green,” she said, a little more confidence in her voice. Her momentary distraction over Maeve’s reaction to the telephone call dissipated, and she was focused on the task at hand.

  “Sing out if anything changes.” Kelly seemed mesmerized by his screen. He twisted a dial, fine tuning some setting in the breach vectors. The sound of the generators came to them from deep beneath the earth. It was a swelling vibrato, with deep bass overtones and a definite rumble. Maeve felt a subtle vibration building as she pressed the phone to her ear again.

  “Mother?” She queried, but there was no sound from the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” The static seemed impenetrable, but she hung on, painfully distracted, eyes riveted on Kelly where he worked the main console.

  “Blue line on the bar,” said Jen, with just the hint of a warning in her voice. “Vector reads five-seven.” She looked at Kelly, who gave her a momentary glance, a knot of tension furrowing his brow as he made a further adjustment.

  “Now?” he asked, eyes widening with anticipation.

  “Shifting into violet,” said Jen.

  Kelly looked at her full on, eyes darting back to his main read-out panel. He bit at his lower lip. “Toggle the number three switch on your array!” Kelly raised his voice, emphasizing some inner decision he had been struggling with.

  The spatial locus readings were solid green, but the temporal vectors were starting to shift on him: green into blue into violet. He decided to suppress his shading algorithm, hoping he could nudge the waveform back in the right direction. “Come on now,” he breathed. “Come on…”

  Jen watched her readings, frowning as the color shifted again. “The bar is yellow now,�
�� she said quickly. “Nine by five.”

  “Shit!” The single word carried a cascade of emotions. Kelly covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide, as though he were searching frantically in his mind for a solution. He must have entered a bad variable, but where? There would be no time for a diagnostic. Kelly was scanning his main readout, desperate for some clue. The spin-out looked good, and they had a stable Arch array. The power readings were fluctuating but still maintaining 97% of full capacity. The spatial locus was dead on. It had to be the temporal shade.

  “Enable that switch again!” He shouted, pointing at Jen’s panel.

  “What?”

  “Toggle number three!”

  Jen passed a moment of hesitation and returned the switch to its original position with a snap. Kelly slid over to her station, the wheels of his chair skidding on the polished tile floor. The bar was moving again, spiking up into the yellow and then falling off to the violet. Maeve was frozen, the telephone limp in her hands as she watched Kelly press the palm of his right hand to the side of his head.

  “God…” he breathed, watching the dizzying array of numbers spin on a digital countdown readout. “Oh God…”

  “Maeve???” The sound of her mother’s voice seemed to echo from the receiver, pinging with a trilling rhythm as if stuck in a reverberating loop. Maeve stared at the telephone, real fear in her eyes when she heard the strange sounds emanating into the room. “I’m frightened… frightened…” the echo seemed to resonate in her mind. No one else seemed to hear it.

  “What’s wrong?” Maeve let the telephone slip from her grasp as if it had burned her hand.

  Kelly had a desperate look on his face. “Phase inversion,” he said. “I wonder if they’ve crossed the line yet? Damn, we should have had cameras in the approach tunnel.”

  “Phase inversion? Are you certain?” Maeve rushed over, leaving phone receiver dangling over the lip of the desk by its cord.

  Kelly was staring at the main console, his mind racing the digital countdown indicator on the upper panel. It was speeding past 15 seconds, the millisecond displays spinning rapidly and giving the impression that time was moving much faster than it should. He had to do something, and quickly. A sudden thought occurred to him as he looked at the pattern buffer. The infusion! If they were moving as planned in the Arch corridor they would have already passed through the infusion. He should have a good signature for both of them in the pattern buffer now, an immense bank of hundreds of thousands of terabytes of computer memory, holding a virtual description, in mathematical terms, of their quantum matrix. He made a lightning fast mental calculation, looking at the reading on the temporal vector range and ciphering in his head. Then he moved, practically knocking Maeve over as he lunged for the vector gradient controls.

  He thumbed a switch.

  The digital clock passed through eight seconds.

  His fingers moved in a blur on the keyboard, eyes glued to the screen. He gave the module the access code to the pattern buffer, and fed the data sample to the core vector guidance unit. Then he opened a protective cover on a side panel and he punched his index finger home, depressing an ominous red button.

  “What are you doing?” Maeve blanched when she saw what Kelly had done. “That’s the vector loop!”

  “What’s the bar doing?” Kelly shouted at Jen, ignoring Maeve for the moment. His voice had a frantic edge to it.

  “Blue by one-seven point two.”

  The digital clock passed three seconds.

  Kelly leaned heavily on the main console, his finger poised on the buffer-loop release button as he counted to two. It seemed the longest two seconds of his life, a life he should not even be living, he realized; a life that had been stolen from the larders of Time.

  He pressed the release, his breath expelling as he did so, his other hand groping to one side feeling for some support. His head felt very light, and his hands were shaking.

  The digital clock ran out and a loud buzz signaled that the Arch breaching sequence had run its course. Kelly’s arm waved lazily behind him, groping the still air of the room. Maeve saw his distress and took hold of his arm at once, easing him down into a swivel chair.

  “What happened?” She was as much concerned for Kelly’s condition as anything else, but her emotions seemed pulled in a hundred directions. The telephone receiver swayed back and forth, and not a sound came from the earpiece now. The console was still fluttering with digital readouts and waveform ray tracings on the thin panel displays. Kelly sat in utter stillness, pale and confused. Jen still sat at her workstation, looking from the color bar to Kelly and Maeve and then back again.

  “Did something go wrong?” she ventured.

  Kelly said nothing, prompting Maeve to look over her shoulder at Jen’s view panel. Now the various elements of the scene that had just played itself out began to gel in her mind, like odd, unrelated clues suddenly coalescing to a certainty. She squeezed Kelly’s hand, almost as if to assure herself that he was still there; still warm; still substantial.

  “You initiated an emergency pattern loop,” she whispered, retracing the moment that had passed by in such a rush. “The countdown was at three seconds and you sent a loop command through the system.” Her voice gathered strength as the realization of what had happened solidified in her thinking. “Kelly, how could you? How could you possibly key the right variable without a computational cycle?”

  Kelly gave her a vacant look. “There was no time,” he said quietly. “The temporal vectors were spiking out of the target range and I had to do something.”

  “Something?” Maeve’s eyes widened. Her Committee had set down one ironclad regulation to be followed without fail in the event of any irregularity on an attempt to breach the continuum: Abort. Kelly, being a senior project team member, knew the importance of the regulation as well as anyone there, for any irregularity, beyond the obvious possibility of equipment failure, would most likely stem from an error in the calculations.

  “The bar spiked into yellow—It must have been an incorrect entry on the shading variable I keyed for Nordhausen. I told him we couldn’t change the time, but I tried to shade the breach on the negative side of the target event, just for safety’s sake. Then the bar started to spike and there were only fifteen seconds on the clock. They were in the infusion and…”

  “Oh God,” Maeve whispered. “But a loop, Kelly. Why initiate a vector loop?”

  “It was the only thing I could think of,” Kelly began. “Actually…I thought of it last week, as a possible safety procedure for retraction.”

  “Retraction?” Maeve gave him a look that immediately demanded more.

  “Yes,” Kelly stammered, still physically upset by the experience. “I was thinking that once we had a signature on their temporal matrix from the infusion, we could run a loop vector, and use the timing on the cycle in conjunction with the half-life setting for retraction. Theoretically, it would allow us to run a retraction routine for every complete cycle of the loop, at specific points during the half-life decay sequence.”

  “Theoretically?” Maeve’s eyes widened to emphasize her displeasure.

  “Well none of this has ever been done before, Maeve,” Kelly protested. “It’s all theoretical at this point. Give me a break! We don’t even know if the breach worked.”

  Maeve looked quickly at the console, finding the microphone to the PA panel in the Arch corridor. She flipped the switch and called for Paul and Robert several times, but there was no answer. Her lips tightened as she looked at Kelly, real concern in her eyes.

  “So maybe it worked,” Kelly offered, hoping to look at things from the bright side.

  “And maybe they’re lying unconscious in the Arch corridor,” Maeve countered. “Or maybe they’re dead! I’m going down there.”

  “Wait, Maeve.” Kelly reached for her arm. “You can’t. The door is sealed and it won’t open for another five minutes until the particle flux effects have cleared.”

  “Fine then
,” she pulled away. “You can open the lock in five minutes. I’m going down there. God only knows what may have happened.” She looked at Jen, clearly angry.

  “What?” Jen was looking from one to the other. She had been trained on the panel readouts, and knew all the appropriate status calls for her station, but very little about the actual theory and mechanism behind it all. Paul’s quiet warning to her added a sense of urgency to the situation. Something was clearly wrong, but she did not know exactly what it was.

  Maeve gave her a stern look. “What does the color bar read now?”

  “Blue at zero point two-five.”

  “That’s close,” said Kelly trying to salvage something from the situation. “It’s well under one percent, which means—”

  “Which means they’re likely to land in November,” Maeve interrupted him. “What century they end up in, however, is anybody’s guess.”

  MERIDIAN

  Part IV

  KT – Excursion

  “It’s a queer sensation, this secret belief that one stands on the brink of the world’s greatest catastrophe.”

  Henry Brooke Adams

  10

  Time: Unknown

  They arrived in a haze of icy fog, surrounded by the darkness of night. As the wet mist around them slowly dissipated they felt the chill of another world embrace them; another time. They had come from the heart of a great metropolitan city in the 21st century, and arrived in the empty darkness of the open desert, half a world away. The one common element these two places shared was the rain. They left one rain storm lumbering in from the Pacific Ocean to find another in the midst of a starless, gloomy night. The heavy overcast obscured the sky with a dreary weight.

  Paul opened his eyes, groping forward with his free arm into the inky blackness around them. As the misty vapors dissipated, the dark shapes of low, rolling hills emerged in his forward field of vision. He took a deep breath, amazed at the strange smells in the air as he drank in his first taste of another time. They were through the Arch, and alive. It worked! His elation thrilled him to the bone and he was taken with an involuntary shiver.