by Razi Imam
“What good would that do?” Shiloh asked.
“I think I may have a theory,” Adora said, shifting through her notes.
“One unexplained area of Mayan culture that required years of practice was the Mesoamerican ball game. The objective of the game was to hit the ball with your right hip, right elbow or right knee and have it pass through a ring attached at the height of eight meters to win the game. It required perfect timing and body coordination, and archeologists had yet to explain how they had developed the incredible skill for playing it. I believe that this time particle may have helped the Mayans practice the game countless times, yet only remember practicing it once, thus reducing mental fatigue and frustration. Similar to a déjà vu experience.”
“Fascinating,” Maria said. “Becoming an expert in a skill without remembering all the failed attempts. Is that what you mean?”
“I think so.” Adora answered.
Sebastian checked his watch. 9:00 p.m. He scanned the team. “I know it’s late and we’re all exhausted, but what do you say, guys? Shall we test out Adora’s insights and see if the remaining three sides do what we think they’ll do?”
He got unanimous agreement from the team.
Shiloh went back to his desk and retrieved a tablet in a blue casing. His eye twinkled at Sebastian. “Here you are, sir, all done. We’re now mobile—we can create time particles without the big—and may I add, ugly—MALDI machine. All we do is insert the bio slide with the thin layer of biomaterial from any side of the nodule into this slot, set up the duration and intensity of the laser, and press the icon. This’ll generate the exact time field with the strength and duration we need.” Smiling, he handed the device to Sebastian.
Sebastian shook his head in disbelief. He took the tablet from Shiloh and laughed. The icon that activated the device was named “Time Warp.” Grinning at the device, he said, “Great job, Shiloh!” He gave him a high five.
Adora and Charles stood aside, watching as the Paramarines sprang into action, setting up the experiments for the next three sides. Michelangelo reset and synchronized the system clocks between the servers, and Fabienne started developing the protocols for the experiments.
“Charles,” Maria called, “We’re working on a strategy to reach and explore Paracel Islands in particular Bombay Reef. Would you be able to look over the maps we have and help us out?”
“Sure, I’d love to,” Charles said, joining her at her workstation. After poring through the materials for a few minutes, something caught his eye. “You see this dark area in the ocean,” he pointed. “This shouldn’t be there. This area is all shallow water, with reefs and littered with shipwrecks. This dark area indicates very deep water.”
Sebastian, also peering at the screen, lifted his head. “Poseidon, would you please bring up satellite images of Bombay Reef from last year on monitor one, and more recent images on monitor two?”
The images appeared. The dark area hadn’t been there a year ago. “What do you think this means?” Maria asked.
Nidal sat down on the center table with his feet propped on a chair, looking back and forth between the pictures. “Remember back at Scripps, Poseidon had pointed out a large shift in water levels registered by the tsunami sensors? What if this dark area is the reason for that anomaly?”
Charles, intrigued by Nidal’s thought process raised his hand and said, “Good point! Sebastian, do you mind if I ask a few questions of Poseidon?”
“Sure, go ahead,” Sebastian replied.
Charles glanced around and then said, “Poseidon?”
“Yes, Doctor Charles Shine, may I help you?” Poseidon responded.
Charles cleared his throat. “Do you have access to GOES-Sixteen?”
“I do,” Poseidon confirmed. “Please allow thirty seconds for me to establish a live link to Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-Sixteen.” Precisely thirty seconds later, Poseidon came back. “I have now established a direct link to the satellite.”
“Amazing,” Charles whispered. “Could you access their onboard storage and bathymetry pictures of the ocean around the Paracel Islands?”
“Yes,” Poseidon replied, “please give me a few moments.”
Charles explained to the team, “As part of my PhD, I studied the process of mapping the ocean floor. The National Oceanic and Administrative Agency, or NOAA, owns one of the most state-of-the-art satellites for mapping ocean floors using bathymetry. When a satellite orbits and takes hundreds or even thousands of bathymetry readings using gravitational algorithms, a supercomputer like Poseidon can create an accurate picture of the ocean floor of an exact location.”
Poseidon returned. “I have the bathymetry maps of the area.” A colorful topographic map of the ocean bed appeared on a monitor. The team could see a yellow and green landmass, and a red geological hole with a swirling pattern.
“Poseidon, please overlay the bathymetry picture onto the satellite picture,” Charles requested. As Poseidon adjusted the frames, the dark area on the photograph aligned with the red hole.
“I think we may have just found your source. This is a deep underwater cavern,” Charles said.
“What are these swirling patterns in the middle?” Maria asked.
Nidal explained, “I’m not certain, but I believe the swirls indicate massive movements of sand.”
Fabienne announced that the experiment protocols were complete, and they were ready to test sides four, five, and six of the nodule. Sebastian motioned Adora and Charles to follow him to the kitchen table.
“Guys, I want to warn you that testing the three remaining sides is going to get hairy. The first three have destroyed our scientific understanding of time. We’re dealing with forces of nature that we don’t comprehend. If you remain with us during the experiments, we may all experience serious psychological trauma. Nothing prepares you for the shock you feel when twenty-two hours of your life are gone. Fabienne was so disturbed that she spent several hours catching up on world news.”
“Sebastian,” Charles spoke lowering his voice, “all my life I have dreamt of this day, and for the last few years I’ve dragged the love of my life through the most dangerous and inhospitable terrain on earth searching for hidden animals and aquatic life. We’re not going anywhere. Right, Adora?”
Adora flipped her hair away from her face with her hand and nodded.
“That’s great to hear. We would benefit from your collective expertise. Let’s get to it.” Sebastian said.
FABIENNE’S SCREAM ECHOED through the hangar as she backed away from the microscope and placed both hands on her cheeks. “Oh, my God, what have we found? Is this our Ponce de Leon moment? This time particle will change our current understanding of longevity and how we practice medicine,” she said, almost yelling. They had just tested the time particles emitted from the fourth side, and Adora’s explanation of the King who didn’t age now made sense.
These time particles created a luminescent silver mist that not only stopped the biological clock of the fungi cells, it reset them to behave as if they were in the early stages of formation. Certain biological cells coming in contact with these time particles wouldn’t age, and could possibly even repair any damage they had suffered.
Charles chimed in, “I told you guys Isikhathi Isilwandle is one powerful hidden animal.”
Given what the team had just experienced with the fourth time particle, the fifth time particle didn’t faze them too much. It confirmed that when two or more people working on a task were exposed to it, they have the same thoughts at the exact same time, making the accomplishment of their task faster and more seamless. They tested the particle by choosing two team members, Adora and Nidal, who had never worked in the past as a team. The task should have taken them two hours to complete, but being in perfect sync with each other, they were able to complete it in forty-five minutes.
“How did it feel Nidal, when you and Adora were exposed to the time particle?” Sebastian asked.
“Smooth. It wasn’t as if we could read each other’s mind. It was more like we both knew what the other had to do at the precise time, and passed control to each other at the exact time,” Nidal explained.
This led the team to the final experiment. The symbol on the sixth side of the nodule was connected to the Mayan symbols of repetition and memory. The team had hypothesized that this time particle created some sort of déjà vu experience.
The team devised a narrow, complex laser maze on the exercise mat using laser pointers and mirrors. It was designed as a kind of obstacle course, requiring the participant to traverse it by contorting their body in precise movements—bending, twisting, and shifting their weight as they went. It was thought that if a time loop was created by the sixth particle, it would allow the participant to repeat the exercise again and again until they mastered the maze, yet only remember doing it once.
The team didn’t know how it would affect a person’s psyche. Whoever participated in this experiment would have to have nerves of steel.
Maria volunteered. The sixth time particle created a pink mist, and unlike the others, the team could see through it. They watched her stand at the start of the mat and begin her first attempt through the maze. After a few moves, she tripped a laser for the first time. A beep sounded throughout the hangar, and she reached into her pocket to click a counter Fabienne had given her. Then the unthinkable happened. Maria stopped moving, and a second Maria appeared at the start of the maze and began to move through it again. Every time she tripped a laser, a new frozen image of her remained, and a new Maria began the course all over again.
The team stood around the mat, staring at the physical miracle unfolding in front of them. They were witnessing Maria in each moment of time like an animated flip-book. Almost an hour later, she completed the course and Shiloh shut off the time field. The many frozen images of Maria vanished, and she approached the team with a smile. “You’re staring at me as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Maria said. “What happened?”
“You tell us,” Shiloh replied.
“Well, I completed it in my first try,” Maria answered.
“Not really,” Fabienne said. “Look at the counter in your pocket.”
Maria took out the counter and her eyes grew wide. “What? This can’t be right. I didn’t attempt the maze thirty times.”
“Yes you did, Maria,” Fabienne answered. “It appears this time particle somehow helped your conscious mind forget your actions so you didn’t feel bored or fatigued while repeating them. Yet it allowed your subconscious mind to remember your actions.”
“This time particle will be the hardest of all to understand,” Sebastian said.
Maria, still not believing what happened, made a beeline for the kitchen. “I need a stiff drink.”
Charles followed her and sat across the table while she nursed her drink. He showed her his notebook, where he had sketched many images of Maria in different positions navigating the maze.
“Charles, my body feels like it’s gone through a two-hour workout, yet I’m sure I completed the maze in the first try,” Maria said, taking a sip.
Charles didn’t respond.
She continued, “I’ve been involved with some daring and dangerous expeditions, but none of them come close to what we’re experiencing here.”
Realizing the need to lighten the mood, Sebastian tossed the whiteboard marker to Shiloh. “How about it, man? Names for the fourth, fifth, and sixth time particles?”
Shiloh, still reeling from the shock of the last few hours, moved robotically to the board. He uncapped the marker and started writing, becoming more like his old self the more he spoke.
“We’ve completed testing of all six sides of the nodule. The first particle somehow affected our time in such a way that we experienced a couple of minutes when hours had passed in the real world. We called this particle Rahpido.” Shiloh wrote the name. “Great particle to use when one needs to pass large amounts of time without feeling or experiencing it.
“The second time particle affected our time in the other direction. We called this particle Lentio. We can see humanity using this particle when doing mundane tasks, such as working out, doing laundry, studying for an exam, or napping. This particle creates time when we don’t have any. I can see myself using it to take hour-long naps and only losing five minutes.” Everyone laughed.
As Sebastian had hoped, Shiloh’s laid-back summary of the findings had a positive effect on the team’s mood. They congregated around the center table, listening, clapping their hands and celebrating the power of the time particles they had discovered.
“As if these two particles weren’t powerful enough,” Shiloh joked, “then we were introduced to the third particle, and I like Charles’ use of the term El Sitio. When we first experienced El Sitio’s effects, we all had individual premonitions to be at a certain place at a given time. And that is how we met Charles and Adora, and how I met that ugly procurement officer.” Again, everyone laughed.
“As for the powerful fourth time particle, well, this one somehow connects with our cell physiology, removing age and damage. By now, you may have caught the pattern in my naming convention. I put a suffix of –io after each word to make it sound Italian or Spanish. It’s been scientifically proven that names sound cooler in these languages.”
The team chuckled as Fabienne spoke up. “How about Fisio, since it affects the physiology of our cells?”
At first, Shiloh was surprised that Fabienne had joined in the fun of naming the particles. He then scratched an imaginary beard, adopting the air of a wise professor. “Yes, that will do, perhaps. What do you think, team?” Everyone voiced their agreement, offering scattered applause.
“Excellent!” Shiloh exclaimed. “From here on out, the fourth time particle shall be called Fisio!” He continued with the next particle. “This one causes two or more people in the time field to experience incredible coordination of thought.” Adora unsure raised half of her hand. “Yes, Adora?”
“When Nidal and I were in the experiment together, it was almost as if were a single mind,” Adora shared. “It felt as if we were connected through some divine force. How about we call it Divinio?”
“Divinio,” Shiloh repeated. “I love it!” he shouted, adding the name to the board as the team laughed and applauded. “Okay, now for the last particle. We all saw Maria navigate the maze many times, yet she felt as if she had done it once.”
“I’d like to name this particle, if I may,” Maria announced.
“Sure, please go ahead.” Shiloh said.
“I’m in love with the poetry of Rumi, a thirteenth-century Persian Sufi poet. He touches upon the phenomenon of time, and that too, déjà vu. So, I suggest we call the sixth time particle Rumio, in honor of the great Rumi.”
“Rumio it is!” Shiloh exclaimed, writing it on the board with a flourish. Throwing his arms wide, he presented the names like the great P.T. Barnum, his voice booming throughout the hangar. “There you have it, folks! The six! Particles! Of Time!” The team burst out laughing, climbing to their feet with cheers and applause as Shiloh bowed. As an afterthought, Shiloh commented, “I’m sure once the scientific community gets hold of our research, they’ll try to give the particles names like beon, meon, ceon, etc. But for the Paramarines, they will always be Rahpido, Lentio, El Sitio, Fisio, Divinio and Rumio.” He put the cap back on and placed the marker atop the table.
The team gathered around the kitchen to celebrate, pouring drinks and toasting each other. Minutes later, they were interrupted by Poseidon’s nautical ping. His voice flooded the speakers. “Team, we may have a dangerous situation developing.”
“What is it?” Sebastian inquired, making a beeline to the monitors.
“I have hacked into the CCTV security feed. Switching to infrared, I have identified armed personnel in camouflage gear, hidden in the tall grass surrounding the hangar,” Poseidon replied. “They appear to be readying an attack formation.”
S
ebastian sprang into action. “Charles, Shiloh, Maria—get the incubator onto the plane. Shiloh, secure the time warp device. Fabienne, secure all hard copy evidence of our research. Nidal and Michelangelo, wipe the drives and erase the whiteboards. Poseidon, kill the lights on my mark.”
He texted 113 to the number provided by the pilot and Panther Two’s internal lights turned on, the door opened, and the stairs extended. At the same time, he got a call from Cebrián.
“Sebastian, Poseidon has made me aware of the situation. I’ve contacted the brigadier general—he’s sending his elite security detail to the hangar. It’ll take them ten minutes to get to you.”
“Okay, we’ll reconnect once we’re in the air,” Sebastian responded, hanging up.
“I thought we came here to experiment in complete safety. Go figure,” Shiloh said to no one in particular.
“Why are we having to run from our own military base?” Fabienne shouted.
“Good question, Fabienne,” Sebastian answered, helping with the evidence. “Let’s first secure our work and ourselves. Then, we’ll get to bottom of all this.”
Sebastian told everyone to board the plane and seal the door. He and Maria were going to stay outside and try to talk to their aggressors, stalling for time. He did a final check of the hangar door, making sure it was locked, then joined Maria at the conference table. Michelangelo and Nidal took up seats next to them. “I guess you guys didn’t hear me,” he said. “You need to get inside the plane.”
“We heard you,” Michelangelo replied, “but we would prefer to stay with you.” Sebastian scrutinized them before letting it go.
They sat tense around the table, waiting. They could hear some commotion outside the guards were doing their job. There was some intense arguing, but no bullets were flying. Yet.