BackTrek

by Kelvin Kelley

“Dr. Morgan. Jack King. He’s the newest member of our team.” Ted said.

  “This is the one? He’s passed the psychological profile?” The bespectacled doctor asked as he peered over his glasses.

  “He’s the one.”

  “The PSYOP profile?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes, the PSYOP profile.” Ted replied. Morgan turned to Jack and looked him over hesitantly before he smiled slightly and extended his hand. Jack shook it.

  “Glad to have you with us. Has Mr. Truman here covered everything with you?”

  “Kind of, but I still don’t get it.”

  “Sir, I’m not all that sure that we even ‘get it’, as you said. Step over here and I’ll try to explain the basic concept.” He walked over to a flat panel computer monitor. Suddenly he looked distracted. “Phillips! Have you seen my coffee?” He began to look around the desktop nervously. “Phillips! My coffee! Where is my coffee?” Jack looked down at the white knuckled grip that the Doctor had on a large half filled coffee cup, and smiled slightly. “Phillips! Where is my-” He paused as he noticed that Ted pointed towards his hands, and immediately began to relax. Jack looked to Ted and both smiled slightly as a thin young man, presumably Phillips, dashed into the room, with another cup of coffee. He saw that the Doctor was now pacified, and quietly left with the cup. The Doctor refocused on the monitor and typed in a few keystrokes which brought up a demonstration file. A wire-framed grid appeared in red on a black background. “This is a single slice of time. Each square represents an area of space in that timeline. Now if we add another grid representing another timeline, the corresponding squares are connected through space.” The first grid turned slightly sideways as another grid slid onscreen and positioned itself parallel to the first.

  “They occupy the same space, the same place, just at different times.” Jack said.

  “Exactly.” The Doctor said as he peered over his spectacles. “So the question is, how to go from one time line to the other. Early Einsteinian theories said that to do so would require a vehicle that could travel at near light speed.”

  “Is that even possible?” Ted interjected.

  “Near light speed…theoretically. But you certainly wouldn’t want to reach light speed, because the theory held that if the vehicle was able to accelerate at light speed, then it would spontaneously become energy. Poof. No vehicle.” Dr Morgan said as he clicked another button on the keyboard.

  “E equals MC squared.” Jack said.

  “Ah, yes. A smart one you are. Okay so how do we do it? Look here. Since these squares occupy the same space, they are already interconnected. There exists a connection. A tunnel, if you will, between the two timelines.” On screen a pair of lines connected the two squares from the parallel grids, and the grids began to warp towards one another as they created a funnel effect on each side and distorted the previously rigid grid pattern. “We refer to it as a wormhole, but the catch...the catch is to open this tunnel on both sides simultaneously. And therein lies our problem.”

  “So is that why we can only go to June seventh?” Jack said.

  “Yes. Now the best that we can tell, due to a sheer accident on our part, the time gate was activated on June seventh at six forty-five. When it was activated, the gravitational wave form generated by the gate vibrated at the exact harmonic frequency that our gate was functioning at yesterday. And the result, just as Kip Thorne had predicted, was a wormhole through time. Hawking would have been very upset.” He muttered absently to himself.

  “Wait a minute. Now you’re telling me that your system has only been online for a day?” Jack asked.

  “Well...functioning...yes, but we’ve been working on this concept-” The Doctor began before Jack interrupted.

  “You expect me to-” Jack began.

  “Jack. It works. What more do you need.” Ted said as he laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, but...okay. You’re right.” He turned back to the Doctor. “So how do you open this tunnel anyway?” Jack asked. A low pitched whine began to increase in intensity.

  “With the time gate. Huge super-cooled ceramic based electromagnetic plates are placed in very close proximity of one another. A gamma ray beam operating in the exahertz range renders a microscopic opening in the fabric of space time, and gradually over a ten minute period of time, they expand an opening that, assuming the frequencies are in sync, will open a tunnel to the past.” The whine had grown in pitch and volume.

  “What about the future?” Jack asked, his voice all most at a yell to be heard over noise.

  “Not possible!” Morgan yelled over the din. “At least not yet. Based on our theories, if we, in the future attempt to come back to this space at this time, the gates are opened, and the frequencies are matched...then yes, it could be done. But it’s way too early for us to be concerned with that. For the time being, we need more information on exactly how to synchronize the gates. It appears as though changing the frequency of the waveform will be the only way to open multiple gates to the same space.”

  “Doc, how much longer before we’re ready?” Ted asked. The Doctor turned from Ted and looked out through the glass window of his office and into the lab. He glanced at the large digital countdown clock that hung on the wall within the lab. The whine had become excruciating.

  “Phillips! Fire the beam.” Morgan yelled. Phillips keyed the sequence, the lights flickered, and a blinding light emitted from center of the machine in the inner lab. Suddenly the noise rose in pitch and became inaudible. He smiled.

  “About two more minutes.”

  “Jack, are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Can we go in yet, Doc?”

  “Not until the gamma beam is terminated.” He said as he stared at the circular hole that was surrounded by dozens of heavy, flat, rectangular plates with bundles of cables streaming away. The hole gradually expanded in size, as sparks swirled around the bright glowing opening, and pulsed in an unearthly rhythm. Jack swallowed hard. He wasn’t afraid. Now that he thought about it, he could never even remember having been afraid of anything. But this was against the forces of nature itself. What he watched, and was about to participate in, was beyond belief, and almost beyond reality. Apprehensive. That was how he felt. They watched as the bright green numbers continued to count down, and the bright glowing hole continued to widen. Electricity arced fiercely from panel to panel.

  “Phillips. Kill the beam.” Phillips nodded to Morgan and keyed the sequence. The glowing center of the machine winked out. Inside the hole, the sparks continued to swirl and pulse, until the countdown clock finally reached zero.

  “It’s not working.” Jack said, as he was able to see through the hole to the other side. There were no longer any sparks inside the gateway.

  “On the contrary, Mr. King. The gate has opened.” Morgan responded.

  “But I can see right through it.” Jack countered.

  “What you see on the other side…is this room...this room on June seventh. Ted, you may proceed.”

  “Let’s go, Jack.” Ted said, as he headed for the door that led into the lab. Jack followed quietly, not sure that if he walked through the gate that he would be anywhere, except on the other side of the room. Ted hesitated at the ramp that led up to the gate.

  “I’ll go first. Count to five, and follow me.” Ted said, and Jack nodded in response, even as he leered cautiously at the electrical sparks that still jumped from plate to plate around the gate. Ted walked up to the gate itself and without hesitation, he went through. Jack stood there for a second and watched as Ted walked down the ramp on the other side and then motioned for him to follow. Jack walked up the ramp to the gate, hesitated slightly, and then darted through the gate to the other side. Much to his surprise, he had felt nothing unusual as he went through the gate. Even when he came down on the other side, he felt as if he had just walked acro
ss the room.

  “See. I told you it wasn’t working.” Jack said. Ted pointed back across the room, and Jack turned to look. His eyes couldn’t believe what he saw. Through the gate he could see Dr Morgan in the lab, as he peered at them though the glass panel. He could see Phillips as well in the outer lab, but when he looked around the gate at the outer lab, he could not believe his eyes. Another figure stood in the lab. It was Ted.

  “Come on, Jack. We don’t have long to get there.” Ted headed for the door and Jack hesitated. He swallowed hard, and slowly turned away from the image in the window.

  “That’s you?” Jack asked. Ted smiled.

  “I told you it works. Come on. We’ve got to hurry.” Ted said. They exited the lab and entered the hallway, the doors closed behind them. Ted turned to the left, and Jack hesitated.

  “Hey. I thought it was this way.” Jack said.

  “That’s the way you came in, but the top level is guarded at night. We can get out of here quicker by using the freight elevator. It’s a little slower, but we shouldn’t run into anyone.” Jack caught up with him and they headed for the freight elevator. Once they turned the corner, Ted opened the set of wide doors that covered the entrance to the elevator. Jack followed him inside as Ted hit the up button. After a brief hesitation, the elevator began its slow ascent. The two stood quietly in the dim light from overhead.

  “Why are we going to wait and get him while he’s trying to get away?” Jack asked. “Why not get him before he kills those two people?”

  “I want to do that, but I’m not sure if we can make it in time. The primary mission is to catch him. If we make it in time to stop the murders, then so be it.”

  “Is that all?” Jack asked. He had a feeling that Ted had something more that he held back from him.

  “We don’t know what will happen if we run into ourselves. In theory it would be no different than the two of us standing here now, but in reality it may cause a host of problems that we’re not yet capable of dealing with. I mean, do you remember seeing yourself before? If you didn’t then, then you can’t now. Time is funny that way.” Jack pondered the paradox that could develop if in fact he did run into himself. If it had not already happened to him, then it shouldn’t happen now. But if the past couldn’t be changed, then of what use was this whole project. He hoped that the theories were just that, theories, otherwise he’d never be able to save Tracey and the kids. And at this moment, that was his whole reason for being.

  Suddenly the elevator came to a stop, and Ted slid open the doors. They exited the freight elevator and headed down the hallway towards a door marked exit. As they approached the door, it began to open. They froze in their tracks, and looked from side to side for a place to hide. There was none. As the door opened further a uniformed figure emerged from the doorway. He saw them and immediately and brought up his weapon. He aimed first at Jack, and then at Ted.

  “Hold it right there! What are you doing here? This area is unauthorized. Identify yourself.” He said as he crouched slightly and thumbed off the safety on his M4 assault rifle. His voice was ice steady, as were his hands. There was no doubt in either Jack or Ted’s mind that this soldier would drop them in their tracks if they even thought about moving.

  “It’s okay. I’m Ted Truman. We were just working late and-”

  “This area is not authorized.”

  “Look we took a wrong turn and took the freight elevator instead. It’s not like it’s a major problem. Just radio back to your superior and he should have us listed as being authorized.”

  “You just keep those hands where I can see them, mister, and I’ll decide what I need-” Suddenly a loud alarm began to blare, and it startled the guard. “What the-” Overhead sprinklers began to spray water. “Shit!” He said as he tried to step out of the way of the spray of water as it fell. Ted leaped at the distraction, disarmed him, and after a swift blow to the back of the head, had knocked him unconscious. He reached down and grabbed the large ring of keys that hung from the guard’s belt.

  “Come on!” He said, as he ran for the door that the guard had entered from.

  “Where did all this come from?” Jack said asking about the fire alarm and the sprinklers that continued to rain.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. We’ve got a job to do.” He said as he ran through the doorway. They ran down a short hallway, and finally came to an outside door. Ted fumbled with the keys and finally got one to fit in the lock. He quickly unlocked the door and freed them from the complex. He ran off and left the ring of keys ring in the door. As Jack ran by, he felt that the door should stay secured. He grabbed the keys, locked the door and pocketed the key ring. He ran to catch up with Ted who had already broken the window of a car in the parking lot. As Jack reached the car, he saw that Ted was hot wiring the car, and suddenly the ignition began to turn over. The engine came to life.

  “Come on, Jack. Get in.” Jack ran to the other side as Ted toggled the unlock button. Jack jumped in and before he could close his door, Ted had already begun to accelerate out of the parking space. Their time was running out.

  Chapter 22