Going Back Read online

  My sincere thanks to my beautiful wife, Susan Anne, her sister,

  Cindy Akin, and my friend Al Rittenhouse for their help and

  encouragement to write this book.

  1

  Symposium

  At the International Symposium on Time Travel, Professor Gregson’s little talk, and the peace of the room, were abruptly interrupted when the central double doors at the back burst open, accompanied by a man in a military uniform, his manner as abrupt as his entry. He was flanked by a pair of soldiers bearing sidearms, while a flow of local security mixed with police and military soldiers hurried across the hall behind them. If his entry failed to get everyone’s attention, what he called out in his commanding voice would not.

  “This entire place is hereby under lockdown, by order of the secretary general.” He marched down the central aisle as if he owned it. Wide-eyed audience members shuffled around or stood on tiptoe to see who was creating the stir. Behind the podium, Professor Gregson was also shocked at the intrusion.

  “Now see here,” the professor objected. “You cannot barge in here and take control of our conference! We have all the proper paperwork and clearances with the various agencies and‍—‍”

  “None of which matters anymore,” the military man stated flatly.

  The men flowing in behind him spread across the room, taking positions at any possible exit and dark corner, searching behind curtains and folded room dividers, as well as among those seated, and receiving a flood of annoyed remarks in the process. The man in the center of it ignored the professor’s protests and hopped up onto the stage, while two more men from each wing of the stage rushed up to surround him, pulling Professor Gregson away from the podium as their commander now took the microphone.

  “I am Colonel Matheson, and this entire conference is hereby under military command.”

  “This is outrageous,” the professor began. “You have no reason to‍—‍”

  “When a murder has been committed, I have all the reason!”

  * * *

  “Time travel is a thing of the past.”

  The man with the trim white beard at the podium delivering this statement got a few scattered chuckles from among those in the crowded assembly hall, along with one or two eye rolls. He waited a couple of seconds before replying with a smile, “I see that joke is starting to get a little bit old . . . Well, I guess it’s about time.”

  The speaker got fewer chuckles this time and took an even shorter pause. “Okay, enough with the bad jokes. Welcome to the International Symposium on Time Travel, a platform whereby we can exchange current theories and technological developments in the science of time travel. I am Professor Gregson, the symposium host and head speaker, and my job is to keep things flowing while making sure none of you violate whatever your nation’s secrecy act happens to be.”

  A few more chuckles came in response this time, the mood of the assembly settling down to something a bit more comfortable. The speaker noted this change before continuing. “Now, seeing as how this is our first little get-together, before I leave you in the hands of our other speakers, I thought a quick recap was in order.”

  He shuffled his notes, bringing one pair of the small index cards he held in his hands to the forefront, cleared his throat once, and began. “As you all no doubt know, temporal waves were discovered in a lab in San Jose. The scientists there were actually looking for gravity waves, and for a while that’s what they thought they had. But time and space are interlinked, and once the source kept tracing back to a location here on Earth‍—well, they arrived at the obvious conclusion that they were looking at a TW. Since then, government labs around the world have been hard at work developing new and better ways of detecting and using these temporal waves.

  “The lab discovered that because of the way time and space are so interwoven, the origin of these TWs could be traced back not only to a given period in time but to a physical location as well. The precision of such measurements has been getting better over the years, but of course there is a limit to the resolution dictated by the uncertainty principle; one cannot know with absolute precision both the exact time and place at the same time.”

  Several in the audience nodded; others looked bored. This part was already quite well known to everyone attending. Professor Gregson shuffled the next index card to the top of his small stack and resumed.

  “Such waves carry with them invaluable information about the past, allowing someone with the proper technology to use them as a window into the past and to see for ourselves the flow of history as it actually occurred. That is the impetus that drives us all in our research and the reason why we are here today to exchange information. We have many hurdles to overcome yet, and also many dangers to be aware of; but I’ll get to those in a minute.”

  Somewhere in the back of the hall he could see a man in a white suit approaching another white-suited security guard who stood his position by a set of closed double doors. The one guard spoke in furtive whispers to get the other’s attention. The professor, though, paid the side conversation little heed and continued with his narration.

  “Normally such waves are smooth, acting as carrier waves for the information they allow us access to. But with the genie of time travel set loose, we have to now consider other possibilities as well, and so it has been theorized when the smooth flow of these TWs may be disrupted. In essence, time-space is like an ocean, smooth and calm. But what if some agency from outside its own time were to go back in time and create some change in history? That disruption would cause a ripple in the smooth flow of the temporal waves, manifesting as what we would call a temporal disruption wave, or TDW. The cause of such a TDW would, naturally, be a temporal disruption event, or TDE. Such a TDW would be like a sudden surge on our smooth ocean, with the bigger the change in history resulting in larger-amplitude TDWs. These changes would then ripple forward through time until any changes they carry have caught up with our present. After that, the possible results are all quite debatable. Would we even remember the former past? Or, as some would argue, do cause and effect have to be preserved over the four-dimensional realm, meaning that at least a few people somewhere would have to remember both versions of history? And what about the possible paradoxes that might result; how do we resolve those?”

  He let these statements linger for a moment, watching the quiet discussions build through his audience before grinning. “Of course, such TDWs have not yet been detected, and some would argue that, by their very nature, since we have yet to detect one, we never will.” He heard a few chuckles in response, to which he gave a nod and continued.

  At the back of the room, a third security guard had briefly joined the other two before all three hurried out the back door.

  “To continue with more current events in our field, efforts have been focused the past decade on using these TWs as a window through which to see our past without running the risk of physically traveling back‍—at least not yet. It is fairly common knowledge among our rarefied group that three main teams are working on developing equipment to actually travel back in time: the Americans, the Germans, and the Japanese. But don’t worry, no one’s actually turned their machine on and used it yet; we’re all too afraid of what could happen if one of us accidentally killed our own grandfather.”

  After the smattering of uncomfortable laughter had quieted, the professor continued, “That brings us to the current state of time travel itself. All three teams are rumored to be working on their own variation of the same technology, but as some of you already know, it does not look like your classic science-fiction approach, where you simply walk into a machine and come out the other end in a different time. In fact, if space-time
is like that calm ocean, then time traveling is like a bottle afloat on that ocean, and the message inside that bottle is the time traveler. Because, you see, we do not send a traveler back per se, but rather the traveler’s information.”

  He shuffled to the next index card while his audience absorbed the explanation. Some knew of this already, but others were hearing this for the first time. After all, the purpose of this conference was to get everyone up to speed on current developments.

  “Traveling through time involves the creation and use of an Einstein-Rosen bridge through space-time. Many of us would know that by its more common name: a wormhole. For bulk matter to go straight through a wormhole, however, could be quite hazardous, at least with our current understanding. But that does not mean we cannot make an appearance back in the past. Dr. Hamilton will be going over this in more detail in his lecture at two, but in essence, we send our information back through time. Trying to send matter back through a wormhole still poses almost as much risk as diving into a black hole, but data is another story. The data in this case would be of the traveler plus everything on him: clothes, equipment, and whatnot. Our traveler would manifest, in essence, as a ghost. He would still be connected back to the present through the wormhole by a sort of energy umbilical, and through this umbilical his ghostly form would be given solid mass.”

  A quiet sea of voices rose as people discussed among themselves the possibilities this raised and all that it implied. Not all of the voices, however, were discussing the subject at hand. A small huddle of security personnel had gathered at the rear of the room, intent on their own conversation spoken in hushed whispers.

  “The original body of our traveler would remain here in the present, sealed away in a pod, but his information would be sent back through the wormhole, as well as his consciousness. One mind, two bodies, as it were, one of them an avatar in the past. Then to get back, you either turn off the energy stream or kill your avatar‍—and hope that doesn’t kill your consciousness along with it. Those would be some of the problems still yet to be solved, but Dr. Sam Weiss of the American team will be going over that in a lot more detail in his lecture later on.”

  At the far end of the chamber, a couple of the security men appeared to be quietly securing the doors, while others in blue uniforms crept in for a quick discussion with them.

  “Also on the schedule will be a talk by Dr. Graystein, an American doing excellent work on fine-tuning the resolution of tracing temporal waves; he says within a year or two it may be possible to narrow our resolution down to within half a day and a couple of miles. Then this evening, British Professor Miles will be discussing his work in using TWs to create a temporal map that would allow one to see the regular flow of history. By examining the amplitudes and phases of time waves, we would be able to see if someone tries to change history. Then of course there’s Dr. Hamilton, as I’ve mentioned, and a guest from the Japanese team, who will‍—‍”

  * * *

  “I am Colonel Matheson, and this entire conference is hereby under military command.”

  “This is outrageous,” the professor began. “You have no reason to‍—‍”

  “When a murder has been committed, I have all the reason!”

  Colonel Matheson’s statement immediately got the attention it was designed to, as all in the room now fell into stunned silence.

  “Two murders, in fact,” the colonel continued. “Dr. Graystein and Professor Miles have both been found dead in their rooms, each one killed by a knife wound to the back. Now, if you’ll all just cooperate, I’m sure we can have you on your way before the weekend is up.”

  Professor Gregson was not the only one left in open-mouthed shock.

  2

  Project Enlightenment

  Monday in the vast emptiness of New Mexico is particularly empty where the Chihuahuan Desert crosses into Texas. Nothing would catch a passerby’s attention save for a small cluster of dusty buildings surrounded by wire fencing and aged trespassing signs.

  Of course, appearances are often deceiving, and in this case very much so. For the cluster of buildings was the entry into the world of wonder that lay below, where scientific and military facilities spread through the cavernous lairs of one of the most highly secured facilities America had to offer. This setting was the hidden home of, among other things, Project Enlightenment, the code name for the American effort in time travel.

  Lt. General Karlson was in his late fifties with a touch of gray in his hair. His military bearing left no doubt he was in command of this operation. When he walked into the command room with a nod to the one standing guard by the security door, the room was a small hive of activity, though most of the talk centered on the murders at the symposium.

  The perimeter of the roughly circular chamber was lined with technicians and scientists at their stations, examining readouts from their monitors, entering new data, and performing various functions while discussing the news with each other. To the far left of where the general entered, the main display took up most of the wall; it looked like a very large monitor screen, but everyone knew it was a bit more. Currently it displayed glowing lines overlaying a map of the world.

  To the right of the general was his current destination: a short flight of metal stairs up to a balcony running the length of the wall opposite the large screen, where two more technicians sat before another smaller bank of controls at an open alcove that stretched out from the center. Front and center was the general’s chair. He walked up the steps to take his place, a couple of soldiers a step behind him, while keeping an ear open for the conversations circulating in the room.

  “Killers got away clean, and they examined everyone at that conference,” one man said.

  “Just a bunch of eggheads,” a second man responded. “Who’d want to kill either one of them?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Graystein was working on bettering our resolution, and Miles was midway through that temporal map of his. Someone’s laying the way for some time travel without getting caught.”

  “That’s pure paranoia.”

  “In the kind of research we’re in? We should have expected this to happen at some point.”

  “The data they brought with them was gone, and their laptops were missing,” a third man remarked. “I’d say that spells motive enough right there.”

  The general let the cross chatter waft around the room as he examined his surroundings. Research scientists were hard at work taking readings and analyzing the various TWs as they came in, trying hard to keep their focus on their jobs and not let news of the murders distract them overly much. The task was a difficult one, though; many there had known Dr. Graystein personally.

  “General Karlson, sir.”

  He had barely sat down in his chair when the technician at the station behind and to his left called to him. He swiveled his chair around, and the technician sitting before one circle of monitors continued. “Security in and about the chamber has been tightened per your orders. We have also increased the alert status for all TW monitoring.”

  “And the board?” General Karlson turned back around for a glance at the large screen as the technician gave reply.

  “The board is clean, sir. Not a single blip in the way of‍—‍”

  “Then what,” General Karlson said, his eyes narrowing as a large glowing red dot appeared, covering a good third of the screen, “is that?”

  “By all the—”

  “We have one,” came from the pit of the chamber below as one of the technicians cried out from his station. “An actual TDW!”

  “Double-check that,” the general ordered. “I’ve been half expecting something like this ever since those murders. I want amplitudes and a trace immediately.”

  Suddenly the pit below was a hive of scurrying activity. Equipment was double-checked, readings confirmed, as somewhere else buried in the facility the small mount
ain of sensor equipment was ramped up to the highest degree of sensitivity that the team could safely manage. Voices called back and forth across the pit as the general sat above it all, awaiting the results.

  “Coolant temperature remaining optimal.”

  “Speeding-sensor drum rotation up twenty percent.”

  “Data coming in.”

  One of the men below at his station paused for a moment, the rest of the room falling into an anticipatory hush, as he focused on his own private display before spinning around in his chair to call up to the balcony. “Confirmed, sir. We have an actual TDW. It looks to be a small one, but there’s no telling how big it could get in time.”

  “Resolve time and location as much as you can,” the general snapped back. “I want to know when and where that came from as precisely as you can manage.”

  “Yes, sir!” The technician on the floor spun back to his display, fast at work, while the rest of the room was for a moment stuck in shocked silence at the implications. But only for a moment before General Karlson snapped them out of it.

  “I should be hearing people working.”

  The quiet was broken, replaced by a buzz of activity the likes of which this facility had not seen since the detection of the first temporal wave.

  “Looks like someone jumped the gun and turned their machine on,” the general muttered to himself. “But who? The Germans have that neo-Nazi movement building that may have a few over there wanting to ‘fix’ the Second World War so the Germans come out on top. But the Japanese have that Shinto thing going that might also have them wanting to recover their honor from the same time period. Hmm . . .”

  He thought for a moment more and swiveled in his chair to once more face the technician behind him. “Lieutenant Marx, give me your assessment.”

  The other man turned in his seat to face the general and give him his full attention.