Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series) Page 16

  Kelly took a deep breath before he spoke again. “Well,” he began, “I found the error. Must have been typing fast when I entered the shading variables. I was trying to type a number sequence and I accidentally hit the shift key with my other hand.”

  “And?” Maeve was waiting for the implications of Kelly’s confession.

  Kelly looked at Jen for a moment, ready to come clean. “I triggered a macro I had programmed for my calculations and one of the numbers was interpreted as an exponential…”

  Maeve just stared at him. “An exponential? Good God, what was the number?”

  “A big one, relatively speaking.” Kelly rubbed at a trickle of perspiration on his forehead. “It raised the temporal locus variable by powers of ten instead of single integer increments. That means the readout on Jen’s board is actually reporting a much greater temporal shift than I first thought.”

  “Powers of ten?” Maeve’s jaw dropped as her mind spawned a hundred fears from Kelly’s statement. It was not a matter of hours or days any longer. It was long years; decades; centuries. If they went back too far they could even run the risk of materializing under a primordial ocean! It was all too much for her, and she covered her eyes with her hand, not wanting to wrestle with the problem for a moment.

  “But I have a plan,” Kelly offered. “Remember the loop command I sent through the system? I attached the pattern signatures of both Robert and Paul—you know, from the infusion data.”

  “What? Kelly, the loop command was for a temporary suspension of the breaching cycle. You can’t loop the system after the infusion’s occurred!”

  “Yes, under normal circumstances that would be right. But when I realized what was happening I had to do something. It was the only thing I could think of, short of simply cutting the mains and shutting the damn thing down. That probably would have killed them both in the Arch, so I ran the numbers and keyed a looping variable instead.”

  “You ran the numbers? I was there, Kelly. You never went anywhere near the logarithmic generator.”

  “Well…I did the calculation in my head…” The statement sounded feeble, but it was the truth and Kelly owned up to it, a bit flustered but determined. “I knew what I was trying to key for the variable, and I did the math in my head.”

  “Without machine verification?” Maeve was staggered. “You mean you just took a random shot in the dark, right?”

  “Well give me some credit. Look, I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got a twenty minute window and I need to make some adjustments on the chamber.”

  “Adjustments? We’ve got to get them back, Kelly.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do—at least get them back on the correct coordinate.”

  Maeve didn’t understand. “You planned for an emergency retraction, didn’t you?”

  Jen heard the word and remembered her brief conversation with Dorland before he had left. “Doctor Dorland said something about—”

  “Then do it, Kelly.” Maeve interrupted, her attention fully focused on Kelly. “As soon as possible! The world will just have to suffer for this. If you can get them back somehow…” She looked at the telephone that was still hanging limply over the edge of the desk by its cord and remembered her mother again. There was nothing she could do, and the tension and frustration of the moment welled as tears in her eyes as she spoke.

  “Take it easy, Maeve.” Kelly was up, extending an arm to comfort her. “This is all my fault, but I have a plan. You’ll see.” He nodded to Jen, waving her away from the scene so he could talk with Maeve in private. “Why don’t you see about getting some tea for us all,” said Kelly. “Or better yet, I think Maeve has a bag of fresh Peets coffee we could brew. How about it, Jen?”

  “Sure,” Jen helped Maeve to a chair, and Kelly noticed the dangling telephone. He walked over and hung the phone up, winking at Maeve as he did so.

  “You’ll call her in the morning,” he said confidently. “Coffee, Jen. I have about fifteen minutes left to make this adjustment, and I don’t want any more mistakes.”

  “Then everything is OK with Mr. Dorland and the Professor?”

  “They’re fine,” said Kelly.

  “I think I left the bag in the changing room with the costumes.” Maeve waved halfheartedly at the doorway.

  “Right.” Jen ran off to fetch the coffee, leaving them alone for a moment.

  “Trust me.” Kelly raised his eyebrows looking at Maeve. “I can do this,” he explained. “I was even sure I had the right number when I did the factor mentally. Just give me ten minutes here and I’ll have things straightened out again.”

  “But how?” Maeve wanted to be convinced, but her mind could see no way out of the dilemma.

  “It’s a theory I’ve been working on. I know it hasn’t been run through your committee yet, but let me explain. When the tachyon infusion floods the corridor we get a good signature on anyone inside and store it in the pattern buffers. I connected the buffers to the retraction module for situations just like this. I was trying to figure a way we could retract on command in an emergency instead of waiting for the half-life decay sequence. So…I entered a loop command during infusion, and got two signatures.” He smiled, holding up two fingers to emphasize his point. “When the system rolls data in the pattern buffers through the retraction module I’ll have two chances to plan an operation. Normally the retraction sequence can only operate when the target time has been reached. We used the particle half-life scheme as a fail-safe at the end. If they go back too far to reach the target date, the half-life in the chamber expires and they get pulled out. But if I can plan an operation, and time it for a very specific point in the half-life decay sequence, there’s a chance to move them before the fail-safe kicks in at the end. With the loop method I can program a retraction sequence for every loop I enter. In this case I just divided the half-life duration by two and set a point for the first retraction opportunity. That gives me a chance to bring them home at the mid-point in the half life sequence…Or a chance to move them somewhere else.” He let that last bit hang, watching Maeve’s reaction carefully.

  Maeve was struggling to follow the theory. “Move them?”

  “Right. I can try to push them forward in time to the correct temporal coordinates! They went back too far. We both realize that now. If it was more than a few decades—”

  “Hell, it was more than a few centuries, Kelly. Probably millennia!”

  “Same difference,” Kelly said quickly. “They would die long before they reached the target time, so we can’t use it for retraction. That only leaves one other chance to move them—the emergency retraction sequence that was keyed to the particle half-life setting.”

  “But Kelly,” Maeve still had an exasperated look on her face. “Have you looked at the time? The tsunami sequence is going to slam into the east coast in less than two hours!”

  “Yes, but I can alter the half-life timing by removing material. I’ve thought about this for some time, Maeve. If I enrich the particle medium I can get a longer half-life sequence in the chamber, but if I thin it out…”

  “That’s dangerous, Kelly.” Maeve had a warning in her eyes. “If you upset the particle generation you could loose the whole array. Then we’d have nothing to time the emergency retraction.”

  “We’ll have to risk it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she protested. “You’re alive.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m supposed to be dead.” Kelly looked away from her.

  Maeve softened her tone. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “But it’s true nonetheless. A lot of other people are going to be dead as well, unless I pull this thing off.” He paused for a moment, meeting her eyes. “Look, Maeve. Tell me you absolutely forbid this as head of Outcomes and Consequences, and I’ll stop right now. Then Paul and Robert languish in the void and, if they manage to survive, the retraction sequence will pull them out…whatever is left of them. In the meantime the whole Eas
tern Seaboard pays a visit to the bottom of the sea. Now—If I pull this off, and I’ve got ten minutes left, I have a good chance of moving them forward to the correct coordinates. I’ve already corrected the variables. All I have to do is time the particle chamber for the decay. Then, when the sequence reaches the half-way marker, the loop I sent through the system will run the retraction module as if it were bringing them home—only it will target the new coordinates I set instead. I can move them, Maeve. You’ve got to believe me.”

  He stared at her, waiting in a long, tense moment. She looked at the floor, uncertain. All of her instincts screamed at her to forbid the whole thing. It was bad enough that they were tampering with the root ends of fate itself. What were they doing here? Paul was right, she thought. This is dangerous. We are dangerous—the most dangerous people in the world.

  “They’re my friends.” Kelly put in one last word as he waited her out.

  She decided.

  “Do it.”

  The words slipped out, but she gave Kelly a sympathetic glance, trying to force a smile to her lips. “But get the math right, damnit!”

  “Already done,” said Kelly. He was heading for the element chamber controls when Jen came in with a carafe of coffee. “I’ll take the first cup over here.” He pointed at the half-life chamber monitors, and Jen hovered over with a steaming hot cup of Major Dickason’s blend. Kelly took one whiff and his mind was suddenly clear on what he had to do.

  “Love this stuff,” he said as he settled into a chair.

  He was soon hard at work, running a few calculations on his laptop and keying information into the chamber controls. He was going to thin out the mixture, and the particle density should fall off to a point where his first retraction trigger should kick in. All he had to do was time it to a certain density. He slid over to the retraction module, noticing how Jen seemed to be staring at the controls there with a worried expression on her face.

  “Excuse me, young lady.” Kelly slipped into the chair. Maeve came up behind them and was looking over his shoulder as he worked. There were still five minutes until his first retraction opportunity. He flipped a series of switches and gave a command to feed the original pattern signature data into the retraction module. A red warning light flashed on the screen, catching him by surprise.

  “Now what is this?” He squinted at the computer dialogue, which read: Out of memory. Please close applications or clear module memory before proceeding.

  Jen started to say something. “I was going to say that Doctor Dorland told me—”

  “There should be plenty of memory in this module!” Kelly was not happy. He moved the mouse pointer to view the registers and saw something he did not expect. “Who’s been screwing around with this thing?”

  “Well I was going—” Jen tried again, but Kelly’s mind was racing ahead to a wrong conclusion.

  “You did? You know you aren’t supposed to touch these modules!”

  “I didn’t,” Jen blurted out. “But Doctor Dorland said I was supposed to watch it very closely, that’s all.”

  “Paul? When did he say that?”

  “Just before he left.”

  “Well did you do anything here? There’s data written all through the banks and I need space to get these algorithms initiated.”

  “I didn’t do a thing,” Jen defended herself. “Doctor Dorland just said to watch it closely and if the readings were to fall into the yellow, I was supposed to run some routines…” She fidgeted, searching her memory, but obviously disturbed in thinking she was being blamed.

  “What routines?” Kelly’s voice had an added edge to it. The clock was spinning towards the three minute mark and he was running out of time. He was connecting his laptop even as he spoke, his attention shifting from Jen to the interface cable.

  Jen closed her eyes, her smooth tan brow suddenly furrowed with concentration. “The focal routines on terminal three!” She remembered what Paul had said.

  “Terminal three?” Kelly looked to his right. He moved the mouse cursor on the screen and took a look at the registers there. “Hello…”

  “What is it?” Maeve leaned in to inspect the screen more closely.

  “There’s code here—a lot of it.” Kelly was scrolling through the data. “What did Paul tell you?” He looked at Jen again, one eye on the time.

  “He just said to run this routine if the retraction module went into the yellow.” Jen pointed at the code on the screen.

  “Well, he must have worked this out with a programmer and set it all up on his own. Did you hear anything about this, Maeve?”

  “Not a whisper.” There was just over two minutes left on the clock.

  Kelly’s mind rushed through the possibilities. What was Paul up to? If the retraction module signal went into the yellow it would mean that there was a loss of integrity on the pattern. The focal routine was probably intended to tighten things up, but it now occupied a huge chunk of memory in the retraction module and there was no room for Kelly’s operational algorithms. Something had to go. He looked at the screen, fighting off a feeling of quiet panic. If he wanted to retain Paul’s focal routine he had to delete something else. There were only two other data banks in the unit: one was occupied by the target date retraction scheme, and the other with the fail-safe half-life trigger. One of these had to go.

  “Jen!” He yelled. “Take the power up to 100% again, now!”

  She ran to obey, the urgency in his voice a sure prod to action.

  What should he do? He had to move them or everything was lost. He decided quickly and flushed the memory for the target date retraction scheme. They were in the wrong time, and it was useless now. An error trap message dialogue flashed onto the screen: You are about to clear system critical data. Proceed?

  “Yes, damnit! That’s why I pressed the clear key!” Kelly yelled at the computer screen as he gave the enter key another hard jab. The memory cleared and he swiveled quickly to engage his laptop and press the send command. Data began pouring into the retraction unit, the speed of light racing time as the seconds ticked away. He had a green board with thirty seconds to spare.

  “How’s that power reading?” He shouted as he lunged toward the main console.

  “Ninety-five percent,” Jen called back. They could hear the turbines shuddering somewhere in the bowels of the facility beneath them.

  “It will just have to do,” said Kelly. “On my mark…” He opened three covered switches and enabled the first two, finger hovering over the third. The digital timer sounded a single tone and he pressed the last button, his face and forehead glistening with perspiration.

  The particle half-life decay sequence in the chamber had reached the mid-point, the density was just right, and the retraction module lit up with an array of fluttering LEDs. Kelly was back at the screen, watching as the data was graphically displayed in a chart.

  “Get over to the temporal monitor, Jen. Tell me what’s going on there.”

  Jen turned to heed him and there was a noticeable dimming in the overhead lighting. Buzzers started going off all around the console as surge suppressing units warned of a major variation in the power flow.

  “Not now!” Kelly shouted at the ceiling, his attention pulled there by the flickering lights, but he knew the problem was really under foot, down with the massive generators that were spinning up to provide the enormous power required for the operation. Something was wrong. There didn’t seem to be enough power available.

  “Are we still at ninety-five percent on the power?” Kelly gave Jen a wide eyed look.

  “Eighty-seven.”

  The lights flickered again and went out. As the room plunged into darkness the battery backup units fed their long coveted energy into the consoles to keep the system LEDs glowing. They could provide power for about fifteen minutes in an emergency—just long enough to shut everything down and back up the data.

  “Oh God!” Maeve said in a low voice. “I was down in the corridor… and I think I forg
ot to close the inner doors.” She could see the red glow of the system warning lights reflected from Kelly’s eyes in the darkened room.

  12

  Time: Unknown

  “Where are we, Robert?” The question was ludicrous, Paul knew, but asking it with the expectation that Nordhausen would hand him a convenient answer seemed to comfort. “Nothing seems to fit with contemporary times here. Is that what you’re saying?”

  The professor looked at the lump of stone in his hand, fingering it in his mind as well. “Shocked quartz,” he muttered. “You might get this sort from a particularly violent volcanic eruption.”

  “Or perhaps as ejecta from a large impact,” Paul put in.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” The professor knew all too well of Paul’s life-long fascination with great disasters.

  “Well look at the sky,” said Paul. “It’s well after sunrise and the atmosphere is laden with smoke and dust.”

  “Consistent with an eruption.”

  “Possibly…” Paul looked at the strange fossil they had discovered. “What about this Ammonite thing. How long ago did they live?”

  Nordhausen thought for a moment. “They were prevalent through the later Cretaceous, and perished with the dinosaurs. This one seems quite young, but who knows when it died. Still…the other clues seem to point to the late Cretaceous as well. Ferns were flourishing; there was active continental drift going on in the plate tectonics and that would produce a lot of volcanic activity.”

  “God, how long ago was that?”

  “Some sixty-five million years.” Nordhausen looked around at the bleak landscape. “I suppose that would account for the lack of weathering on these ridges. Kelly sure shaded his damn variable, alright. I told you we didn’t have enough time to plan this operation. It’s nice to be early, Paul, but sixty-five million years? Good God!” The professor was finally realizing what had happened. He sat down, as though felled by the impact of the emotion. The first thing that came to him was finding a way home. “How the hell are we going to get back?” he looked at Paul, a dumbfounded look on his face.