Chapter 21: Kathy’s lecture about Temporal continued

In Mexico City, a small school had been bombed by terrorists in 3134, resulting in the death of seventy-three children, five adults, and many more injured. The bombing produced other consequences that resulted in the terrorists’ demands for the release of other prisoners from jails. After much research, Kesslov had moved within a few days of the incident and sent a message to the school’s main system warning of the bomb and providing the exact time it was due to go off. The school was evacuated, and no one was killed. The computers recorded no significant changes in the original timeline.

Authorities located the terrorists, and after a heated battle, had arrested the survivors.

While celebrating their achievement, Temporal’s crew received the official announcement of what had been long suspected — the apparent cessation of aging for all those under the time fields. The only detectable change in body functions was a marked increase in the immune system. Whether aging had ceased because of this, or there was a more direct connection from the exposure to the time fields that maintained Temporal wasn’t known, but the result was there; nevertheless, people weren’t getting discernibly older.

Over the years, most women at Temporal had stopped using any type of birth control, yet there were no births. Not that surprising since their cycles had stopped as well. There were discussions among some of the women about taking a sabbatical from Temporal until they became fertile and conceived, but so far, no one had asked for time away for that purpose.

The evidence was not all in, but there remained no births at Temporal. Long life, yes, but the very fields that slowed or stopped the aging process also appeared to stop the female body’s reproduction processes as well. Sperm was still produced by the males, but ovulation didn’t occur in the females. The fields seemed to insist on maintaining the status quo.

Violent nausea was prevalent among the first of the time travelers, but gradually, fine-tuning of the system and its computers brought the nausea to a minimum — at least for some people; there were others who never overcame it, but there were plenty of jobs that didn’t require movement through time. Over the years, standard procedures were developed for personell who were to be assigned to move through time. Volunteers from the group were tested with short jumps in the chamber. Disorientation and nausea were the case — not the exception. Kesslov set up rigorous training for anyone who wished to be an Operative and could tolerate the chamber. Independence and exceptional intelligence were high on the list of qualities for Operatives; no matter how much research was done, once an Op was dropped, he or she was on their own.

The Ops tended to be a group of their own — clannish, somewhat arrogant, quick-witted — at least those who survived. The slow ones did not. Moving through time was dangerous — in many ways. The Ops weren’t “hulks” but tended toward physical conditioning on their own, in addition to the minimum requirements. Most would spend at least as much time with the computers, being taught history using “blurps”, or researching for themselves.

On rare occasions, an Op was brought back dead. The first time that happened, the dead Op had been sent back into the timeline a few microseconds after he had been returned, then the chamber was moved to a few seconds before the Op was killed and he was brought back — it worked, Keslove thought it had worked only because they happened to find out te exact time the Op had been killed. He also thought it had worked because the timeline had been “disturbed” for only a few microseconds which in turn had not caused any major changes in the timeline. Years later, it happened again. The chamber was sent back to pick up the Op before he was killed, then locked on, and the command was given to the computer to bring the Op back, but only an empty chamber returned. The technicians again sent the chamber back and they tried to lock on, then fed more power to the equipment, but still, the chamber came back empty. Everything was checked out. When the chamber was again returned to the timeline, all available power was fed into the circuits. The chamber seemed to have locked on this time. The fields around Temporal shimmered unsteadily as titanic energies fought to overcome one another. The Op still didn’t return. The chamber was unlocked and brought back empty. More research followed, and more ideas were tried. Two more attempts at bringing the Op back failed — the last with near disastrous consequences to Temporal itself. That’s when the theory of the locked helix was born. The Op, apparently, couldn’t be dragged out of the timeline once a locked helix occurred. Temporal had almost become part of that helix.

A memorial service was held for the Op.

Consistencies didn’t seem to be the case when someone was killed, at least as far as bringing the Op back was concerned. There was something they didn’t know. Sometimes, as in Thad’s case, the attempt to bring the Op back alive was successful; in other instances, the Op couldn’t be locked onto, or was locked onto, but the chamber couldn’t bring him back, or they couldn’t find his exact time of death. One thing did appear consistent, however. If an Op was lost, attempts at sending another Op back always met with the same results — the chamber seemed to work perfectly, but when the other Op owas brought back, he had no memory of being dropped at all. Instrumentation sent with him showed no elapsed time in the other timeline. Apparently, the volunteer couldn’t be dropped into a timeline near where an Op had been killed or lost. In short, Temporal could change history as long as it affected someone outside Temporal, but an Op couldn’t coexist with himself, nor change his own timeline, nor could he change a timeline that involved someone that was part of Temporal — with few very specific exceptions. Time didn’t allow paradoxes.

When changes the Others had produced were traced to their source, Temporal was frequently unable to put the chamber into a time slot of about three hours duration surrounding an incident involving the Others. Sometimes this varied. Was it something the Others were doing, or was the phenomenon somehow similar to the problem of the Op rescue? So far, no one had come up with an answer, but Jamison suspected that the Others had some means of accomplishing this. Changes made earlier in the timeline were still effective in preventing the changes the Others had produced, but frequently, the Others produced adverse changes that were nearly impossible to prevent. As an example, Kathy told how the Others had dropped into the timeline and set off an explosion at Boulder?Hover Dam in Colorado. The immediate time prior to the explosion could not be accessed by Temporal, and before the exclusion interval began, the bomb wasn’t there. You might be able to divert a person from being in a particular place at a specific time, but you couldn’t keep the dam from being there. It was easier to cause disaster than to prevent it — one of the reasons why terrorists had been successful in so many instances throughout the years.

Kesslov, not giving up, designed a mechanism that produced a explosive dampening field that he concealed near where the explosive would be placed. The bomb went off, but didn’t cause any damage. Dam security was increased, and so far no ohter explosive attempts have occurred at the dam.

Kesslov continued his research into the locked helix theory, driving himself to the point of exhaustion before giving in to a few hours of sleep. This went on for months. He was haunted by the death of the Op and his brother-in-law, vowing to bring them back. Late one night, he programmed the chamber’s computer and was gone. No one knew where, nor did the computer — Kesslov had programmed it to wipe its memory of the event if he hadn’t returned by a specified time. It was assumed that he made an attempt at retrieving someone and had become stranded himself.

Kesslov’s assistant, Jamison, took over research and technical management of Temporal, and Ian Kessler eventually became the overall director of the organization. Shortly after, there was a breakthrough in computer technology, and true AIs were born.

With the loss of Kesslov’s genius, time field research and development bogged down. Jamison tried and was indeed a brilliant man — but Kesslov, he was not.

Development in the equipment had reached the point where two Ops and supplies could be sent through time without any problems other than the enormous expenditure of power required. Kesslov had been working on tapping into the “energy of the timeline itself,” but no one could understand his scribbled equations, let alone make a practical application from them. The farther down-time or up-time the chamber went (particularly up-time), the more power required. Moreover, the faster the chamber was pushed, the more power it needed. The practical limit up-time was around six thousand, and the barrier at down-time one million presented an insurmountable obstruction to Temporal’s struggling chamber.

Equipment was developed and refined until the chamber could be tracked as it tunneled its way through time, but no trace was produced in the general timeline. The new equipment had failed to detect the movements of the Others, but it had no trouble tracing Mack’s movements.

With her lecture finished, Kathy took a sip of water from her canteen and offered it to Mack as she had done many times after he had been healed by the medkit. After a long drink, he handed the canteen back. She must have guessed his thoughts, because she said, “Does it offend your sensibilities to drink after me?”

Mack chuckled. “It wasn’t that, but now that you have mentioned it, I have a comment. You have, apparently without thought, offered me water from your canteen many times when the camp water jug wasn’t handy, and even more now that the jug is gone completely. Over the years in my time, we had multiple outbreaks of killing viruses, and drinking after anyone, other than a spouse or lover, just wasn’t done. Of course, my whittled-out water jug/boat is useless other than having water convenient for cooking. I certainly can’t hang it on my belt the way you two do with your canteens.”

Kathy chuckled as she said, “Thad isn’t a lover or a spouse, and people at Temporal don’t go around drinking after each other as a rule, but then again, we live in close proximity, bathing is easy, and we know each other well. Then there are the fields to keep us healthy, so disease is a long way from our minds, I suppose.”

“But you poured water into my cup from your personal canteen almost as often as you poured from the camp water jug.”

“Of course, all three automatically sterilized the water, but I suppose Thad and I did give you water out of our canteens occasionally.” Kathy thought for a moment before adding, “What can I say? Perhaps my subconscious accepted you long before Thad and I made up our minds about you. If you think about it, we are — especially back here — all three locked into a very special little group. I strongly suspect that none of us would have survived the confrontation with the aliens without the other two.”

Kathy smiled and hesitated before going on. “In the beginning, you were badly injured, and I used water from the camp jug to fill your cup. But, after a while, you just became ... part of us, and I offered you my canteen for a drink while we were climbing to the new campsite, as well as other times. We at Temporal have become accustomed to perfect health, and well, I just didn’t think. Have I offended you? If so, I don’t know what we are going to do because we left the camp water jug back with the aliens.”

Mack grinned at her. “I’d be a fool to be offended. Rather, I’m flattered.”

Kathy’s blush was instantaneous.

As they continued sitting there relaxing in the shade of the stunted tree, Mack thought about what Kathy had said about Kesslov wanting to tap the energy of the timeline. He remembered the feel of torrents of rushing energy as his little group made their way so far down-time. Temporal used advanced technology to move through time, but ironically, technology from an earlier time has inadvertently changed my brain until I must somehow control some of the same types of energy that Temporal does, only I do it with my brain. Have I really tapped the same energy source that Kesslov envisioned? I, for sure, don’t know.

For the thousandth time, it seemed, Mack wondered what the other threads represented. The green thread was clearer than the others — more accessible. But what do the others represent? Alternate realities? A few weeks ago, I would have laughed at anyone who speculated about alternate realities. To me — then — the term seemed like an oxymoron. If something is real, how can there be an alternate of that person who is also real? Words. Meaningless terms that teased my mind with whispers of invitation. Can I turn onto one of those paths and find myself in another world where Janie still lives? Would there be another Mack there also, or would she be married to someone else? I’m here — now. There is a beautiful woman sitting shoulder-to-shoulder here in the shade as we look out at the scene below us. She seems to have done her best to paint a picture of Temporal in my mind’s eye. Does Temporal exist to do the things she insists, or is it run by a megalomanic who is interested only in power and money?