Drive Time

by Matt Wilkinson

  Simon was heading towards a meeting with a man who was an avid supporter of that philosophy. Having him in the group would help in their interstellar dream no end. If the majority did, in fact, decide that they wanted to live in a world of slavery and the self-centred, they'd start a new one elsewhere and take anyone who wished to join them; no harm, no foul. Their company would own the technology that allowed them to reach other planets, so they would also have the right to claim them. When Zack assisted in the creation of the first spacecraft with faster than light capability, they would do everything in their power to be the only ones to govern the use and reproduction of the technology. This would allow them to avoid corporate interference in creating their own new and better world. If PRE-Innovations’ absence on earth meant that the fall of humanity was to continue as it had in alternate timelines, it would be on their own heads, the group weren’t in the business of forcing their ideals on anyone, at least there would be an offshoot of humankind able to continue elsewhere. Their galactic colonisation wouldn’t need to stop at one planet, our species would be free to spread to other planets, successfully cementing their place in the universe and avoiding the threat of extinction.

  This was all still a pipe dream, but as Simon hurtled toward his destination, he marvelled at how close it was to becoming possible. So much of what they had previously fantasised about making a reality was now just that, and the icing on the cake was so close to fruition. The man waiting for him to touch down was essential in the next big step.

  As Simon tapped at his keyboard, he smiled to himself, thinking of what the future holds and envisioning the amazing things waiting to be discovered on other planets.

  Chapter 45

  Simon touched down in Houston and took a cab to the agreed intermediary location where he and Zack would meet, a thirty-minute drive from the airport. Simon being Simon, he had chosen to meet at an IHOP, because he loved breakfast food, no matter the time of day. He also enjoyed the unlimited root beer refills, as the soft drink was rare in the UK. Simon was first to arrive at the restaurant, Zack followed minutes later and spotted Simon as he entered, they had engaged in a video call when arranging the meeting, so they immediately recognised one another, he joined Simon in his booth. The average person might find Simon strange, but Zack spent all of his time around the smartest people that the world had to offer, so Simon’s unique brand of eccentricity was familiar to him. He also knew intuitively that this particular meeting would not end in disappointment.

  The meeting played out a lot like Victor’s reintroduction to Sarah, except without the romance. Simon informed Zack that he had been lured here under false pretences, but with the best intentions. He regaled Zack with the details he knew would lure him in, then used his laptop to allow him to converse with his future self back at HQ in Harrogate. Contradictory to expectations, Zack was more impressed by his video counterpart’s location in space than in time. Zack had never had the opportunity to visit England. The call ended, and Zack was overjoyed that he had been chosen to be a part of PRE-Innovations’ undertaking.

  “Well, I suppose the question of where are all the time travellers is solved," Zack said, in awe of recent events.

  There was a theory among scientists that travelling into the past was unlikely since we’ve never encountered any travellers from the future in our present. PRE-Innovations had supplied an answer to the dilemma, proving it possible. It had become apparent that time travel is more like a telephone conversation, you need a device at both ends for it to work, so there could be no time travellers before time travel's conception.

  Simon explained their plans to Zack in further detail, already knowing that Zack was in perfect agreement. After the convincing and exciting chat with himself, Zack was willing to get on a plane immediately if it meant he could help with their project, but they decided that he should get his affairs at NASA finalised before leaving.

  “I don’t have the math committed to memory, we would need to collaborate with NASA, I do have friends there who would be willing to join us," Zack explained.

  “Our mind write process comes with a welcome side effect, it makes your memories eidetic, you would remember every part of your work.”

  “Well, that is a bonus, but we could get this done quicker with help.”

  “We won’t need it, you’re all the help we need. We have an eternity of looping to get it done right.”

  “Having someone to brainstorm with always helps, though. What will we do when it comes to construction? Who will we get to pilot it.”

  “You have a lot of questions, and I’m not at all surprised, but we’ve been through all this before, just not as efficiently. You’ll get your answers in time. For now, I can definitely answer your last two questions; both of those things will be tasked to the androids.”

  “Androids?”

  “Yes, another of our secret technologies that will soon to be less secret. It should be easy to create an FTL ship in a hangar somewhere using our androids, and no one will be any the wiser, no need to involve workers who might have loose lips.”

  “How are we going to launch it without sending home security into red alert?”

  “That’s a question we’ll need time to work on, but relatively speaking, it’s not a problem. We’ll perform the search for a suitable planet by sending the same craft in a spiral. Once it’s found a suitable planet, it will let our past selves know, and they can send it on a more direct route to save time. That way we can blanket a large amount of space in no time at all.”

  “We just need to get to work on that ship.”

  “Yes, but we can work on it for a hundred years or more and still have it finished by tomorrow if that’s all we work on. There’s real-time, then there’s the time that our drive manipulates, which we call drive time. Our team has grown a lot recently, there are enough of us to work on a few projects at once. The priority right now is teleportation and our ship. We can split into two teams of four, one team for each project.”

  “You’re on teleportation too?”

  “Of course. When we find that planet, we’ll need to a quicker way of getting there and back.”

  “How far have you progressed?”

  “Well, we can transfer non-living matter and single living cells; we use a form of the technology in our cloning pods.”

  “Cloning pods?” Zack exclaimed.

  “Yes. It seems like a lot to catch up on, but you’re just about there now.”

  “Why do you need clones?”

  “Well there was a slight time mishap recently, and some of the younger members of our team were deleted along with their timeline, we had to clone their bodies so that we could write their minds back to their brains.”

  “You can write consciousness to a human brain?” Zack was wondering what the hell he was going to hear next.

  “Oh, yes, forgot about that one too. That’s how our time looping procedure works. We can back up our minds and send the data back to be rewritten on our past selves brain.”

  “That’s what you meant by looping? I thought you were talking about the information being in the loop, not your actual consciousness.”

  “Yeah, it’s not quite physical travel between times, but we’ll see what the future might bring. We’re almost there with our ability to send our consciousness back to our mind in the past, but it’s not quite the same.”

  “Tell that to Sam Beckett,” Zack said.

  “See, that’s why you were chosen,” Simon replied, in approval of Zack’s reference to Quantum Leap.

  “Anything else you’ve neglected to tell me? I’d make a joke suggestion, but I think you’ve covered all the holy grail technologies, I can’t think of any more, no matter how ridiculous.”

  “Wait a second.” Simon thought for a long moment. “Androids, cloning, mind digitisation, almost teleportation, nanobots. Hmm. No, I think that’s about it.”

  “Nanobots? That was you?”

  “Yes, that was us.”

&n
bsp; “So you’re already giving back?”

  “Yes. That was one of the first technologies that we brought forward, after a few trivial items. The nanobots screwed the future further, before we put it right, or assumed we did.”

  “Screwed the future further? The future was screwed?”

  “Yes, I thought you realised why we were doing this.”

  “I assumed you meant that you’d calculated that a future screwing was possible, I didn’t realise it was already screwed. Already going to be screwed. You know what I mean.”

  “I do. Even the team and I are still not sure how to handle the tenses now. I’m not doing a very good job of this, am I? Victor said he should be the one to come, or at least join me so he could be the one to do the talking. I’ll try and remember everything from the beginning.”

  Simon went through the whole story about the fall of mankind and Stan’s part in it all.

  “Are you sure your team have a handle on this? Some of this sounds like it could have been disastrous.”

  “There’s a learning curve. I think we have it all under control now.”

  “You think? There could be universe destroying repercussions if this isn’t done right.”

  “Oh dear, this really didn’t go well, maybe I should reset this, start again and explain better.” Simon began typing on his laptop. It wasn’t a threat, it just sounded that way, but Simon was too naive to realise it.

  “No, no. You don’t need to do that. I’m sure you have it all in check now, and you’re learning from your mistakes. I wouldn’t want you to go through any more trouble to get this done.”

  “Yes, we’re doing a lot better thank you. There’s almost three times the staff at headquarters now, including yourself, plenty of people to prevent more mistakes. We’ve found that, if we do make mistakes, we have every opportunity to put it right with future hindsight.”

  “Oh yes, I suppose that’s now a thing.”

  “You’ll come to see that there are a lot of new things that weren’t previously things. Right now I feel like anything is possible.”

  “I’m feeling that too. This is why I decided to work for NASA, being on the edge of tomorrow. You guys literally are, always. I’m already signed up.”

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  Chapter 46

  Simon spent the next few hours touring the Space Centre with the euphoric Zack, meeting other brilliant minds. Zack was evidently trying to change Simon’s standpoint on bringing in more of his colleagues, he introduced each of them as if they were potentials. Simon had meticulously researched every applicable NASA employee while looping in time and Zack was the only reliable candidate among them, at least for his purposes. Simon had, in other realities, already been acquainted with every one of the co-workers that Zack introduced him to, even if their own knowledge of Simon was lost to a defunct timeline.

  “I see what you’re doing Zack, but I’ve trialled a lot of these guys already, and they don’t work out.”

  Zack took a moment for the statement to sink in. “Right. Maybe it would be different with my influence. They’re colleagues, and I know them well.”

  “Did you know that Geoff has two families?”

  “Um... No.”

  “We didn’t either until one of them sent a private detective to find him, and find him they did, along with the rest of us and our work.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. You never really know a person. Though there are a few rare exceptions to the rule.”

  “Oh well, was worth a shot.”

  Simon looked around the building.

  “Do you think that they’ll give us problems when we finish their designs ahead of them?” he asked.

  “The craft designs are always going through permutations, the FTL drive is still a theory. We can make the ship unique enough to pass as a rival project, some of the science is public domain. Whoever makes it practical is the one who deserves the credit. We can continue the work I was involved with here, even though it feels rather shady.”

  “The bottom line is, NASA is too involved in politics to be entirely trustworthy," Simon said. “Don’t worry, once we have everything in place and we’ve made our claim on a new world or two, we can bring more of your friends into the fold. It’s only right, we’re standing on their shoulders to achieve our goals. It’s the dream of everyone in this building, we won’t take that from them. Besides, some of them might not have seen it happen in their lifetime without our involvement.”

  “That’s a good point, we’re all working towards the same thing, it shouldn’t matter who gets there first, as long as it’s done with no ulterior motives.”

  “We definitely have no selfish intentions, this is for the species as a whole, we’re just giving them a much-needed wake-up call.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir. Let’s finish this tour so we can get you back to your work. Our work.”

  Simon smiled. “Actually, I’ve already taken the tour. Several times. You just had so much enthusiasm, and I wanted to make sure you were completely comfortable with what we’re doing after I messed it up a bit earlier.”

  “No worries, I’m in all the way. If we can get to another habitable planet within the year, I couldn’t be more in.”

  “I’m hoping for a week. Two at most.”

  “Stop, or I may have some kind of attack. I can give you a ride back to the airport if you like.”

  “Can we stop for a root beer on the way?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then lead the way.”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  When Simon returned to HQ jet-lagged and fatigued, it didn’t stop him from heading straight to his workstation. The rest of the team were brainstorming the teleportation conundrum while waiting for his arrival. There weren’t any outstanding tasks for them to perform, they had both the SARA, and the androids in production and their input wasn’t required, so they were putting all their time into the search for inspiration. Keeping the manufacture of both technologies under wraps had not been a tremendous difficulty as they’d constructed the first two units from SARA produced parts and then, like the nanobots, the androids engaged in self-replication. The resulting mass of humanoid robots then became the assembly line for all the SARA units that PRE-Innovations produced, working together at an incredible speed. Once they had a good number of units for both technologies, Beth would handle the marketing. The retail prices would only need to cover the cost of production, which was next to nothing as all materials were acquired by recycling refuse through the SARA. With such low production costs, they could afford to give the units away and planned to do just that. No charges were incurred for even transporting the waste that they were re-appropriating. After making suitable arrangements, refuse trucks were diverted to their factory to dump their loads in the plant’s warehouse. They owned the manufacturing plant, and their workforce was gratuitous, so their only outgoings were on taxes and electricity, the latter of which was only required for running lights and testing SARA units. The androids were powered via long-life batteries, which recharged using water, much the same as the nanobots. PRE-Innovations also hoped to give the world free energy, since they were working to build a society free of currency. Utility providers would have the means to create their own dictatorship if they were the only ones to have what others needed. The team theorised that their FTL craft would be powered by a source that would have countless applications, such as powering whole city grids. They hadn’t figured that part out just yet, it was still only a theory, but they knew that, in drive time, anything was possible.

  The group broke from their discussion to welcome Simon home and ask him about his trip.

  “It all went well, Zack is wrapping things up at his end then coming to join us. We need to get teleportation solved, I notice that you were having a conversation about it. Any theories?”

  “You don’t want to rest maybe?” Spencer asked. “A day of flying is tiring.”

  “We’re almost done,
teleportation and FTL are the final pieces of the puzzle. If we all decide now that they are all we’ll focus on until they’re complete, we could have our answer in minutes, relatively speaking. What do you think?”

  “Well, that was part of the conversation that we were just having, so yes.”

  “Zack and I discussed breaking into two teams to work on both simultaneously. We should decide who is working on which project. Obviously, Zack is on FTL, who wants to join him?”

  Beth, James and Jules raised their hands.

  “Okay, so the young team are on FTL with Zack, the rest of us oldies are on teleportation.”

  “I’ll make a note of the time," Victor said.

  The group watched him make a record, the moment had substantial weight to it. This could be their most significant juncture since they invented time manipulation. Conversely; one — or both — of their final hurdles could be insurmountable no matter how long they worked on it, there was a chance that they may be hoping for a report that they would never receive. They stared at Victor’s screen, waiting for what seemed like an eternity to hear the jingle of the video conferencing software.

  Chapter 47

  The group put the finishing touches on the teleportation devices the next day, after successfully skipping the development time thanks to their future selves. Zack was due to arrive at Manchester airport later that afternoon, and they had decided to delay the maiden voyage until he joined them. Each device, of which they had two, was a hoop of metal and plastic set into a raised platform on the ground, they were connected to the quantum computer via paired photons in each unit. A person or object would be broken down via a scan at one portal, then the data would be sent to the second portal where their subatomic particles were reassembled. The quantum computer handled the complex calculations and vast amounts of data flowing between the hoops, and the time drive would allow the transmission to across time as well as space. No one would ever be late for an appointment again. The human race would have trouble getting used to living life in a temporally non-linear manner, as had the PRE-Innovations group, but the ability would give them even more freedom to live life as they chose. The population would initially only be allowed access to travelling through space, time travel would be earned once PRE-Innovations thought that society was ready for it and guidelines were in place. Combining this technology with the SARA, the group foresaw a great peace brewing for the future, so they didn’t imagine it would take long before they could trust everyone with the benefit.