History Shattered

Time warp – distortion in time: a hypothetical distortion in the continuum of space-time, popular in science fiction, allowing time to stand still or people to travel from one time to another (Bing Dictionary)

Time warp – a stoppage in the passage of time; also, a distortion of time whereby an event or person could hypothetically move from one era to another (Dictionary.com)

Time warp – a hypothetical discontinuity or distortion occurring in the flow of time that would move events from one time period to another or suspend the passage of time (thefreedictionary.com)

Monica tried to visit briefly with each of her senior staff and Colonel James individually before departing for Station 28. Normally, she would be leading the group meeting of scientists during the initial stages of the final phase of the particle collision countdown, but this morning’s circumstances required a change in protocol. She intended to make a brief video address from her seat at the communications console inside 28, but Pat and Jasmine would be in charge of the bulk of the meeting. There had been no more tears after she had pulled herself together in the wake of the shower episode. She hoped she could hold it together through her remarks from 28.

As she left the facility’s main building for the ride out to Station 28, Colonel James was making contact with the regional electrical power grid regarding the major power draw which would be occurring later in the morning. She felt as though everyone on her team understood their roles well, so there was a level of confidence bubbling inside her that had been absent the previous evening. It would seem strange to experience the collision from within the remote confines of 28 rather than from the bustling chaos of the main control room. She was used to being surrounded by her team in the midst of that chaos and bustle. This morning, she would be in a remote location and totally alone in almost every sense of the word.

Pat had offered her assurances that the repairs to the accelerator had gone smoothly and the tests had indicated the new part was functioning properly. He also let her know that they had learned more regarding how the electromagnetic elements were affected by the massive bursts of energy created by the particle collision. That knowledge would allow them to do a much better job of regulating the energy flow into 28. Combining that with the additional power lines feeding into 28 should give them much greater ability to support the anomaly once it was created. He refused to go so far as to guarantee that he’d find a way to keep the wormhole open as long as necessary until she could return, but he was at least implying that he felt they would be able to buy her a little additional time in fourteenth century Crimea if she needed it.

The meeting kicked off with a great deal of nervousness. Pat and Jasmine handled their roles just fine, but the gathering of scientists were accustomed to having Monica pump them up before any major event, and that was not a skill either Jasmine or Pat possessed. Monica kept her comments extremely brief, partly because she had several other tasks she needed to attend to, and partly because she realized that the longer she talked, the greater the chance she would lose control of her emotions. The closest she came to tears was when her staff stood and clapped at the conclusion of her remarks. There were a few more tasks to perform, but there were no more words to be said. It was almost time to go.

She was expecting the wormhole to take her to a point in time just under two months later than Tyler’s last mission should’ve taken him. If their sense of history was correct, she would arrive near Caffa in the middle of the Crimean winter of 1346-1347 A.D. She would also be arriving during the height of the Golden Horde’s siege of the outpost. That combination of events had prevented the European merchants from departing Caffa until the spring of 1347. Monica felt a little nauseous, and she wasn’t sure if the uncomfortable sensation was due to her apprehension about the entire experience or related to her sense of dread about the prospect of having to kill innocent people. She decided the reason really didn’t matter much to her stomach as she threw up in the bathroom of Station 28. That particular facility seemed to be getting far more than its share of unexpected activity over the past week.

The power-up sequence went off without a hitch, and the replacement part functioned perfectly. In their second intentional effort to create a wormhole, everything they were attempting actually came together almost perfectly. In his pre-collision remarks, Pat had reminded the team of scientists that they were utilizing the accelerator and the actual particle collision in a way neither were designed to function. What they were attempting was nothing short of recreating a very specific failure, and the breakdown of systems had to occur almost as if PD was designed to malfunction in a way specifically developed to produce the anomaly. The irony of attempting to recreate an equipment breakdown to allow them to produce time travel to correct yet another mistake, or multiple mistakes really, by a member of their team was not lost on Pat. He shared his thoughts with Colonel James, who seemed to have less of an appreciation for the ironic humor Pat had found in their efforts.

As with each of the prior full power collisions, the team went from the anxiety and anticipation of the countdown straight into the assessment of what had just occurred. The seconds immediately after the collision were filled with hushed nervousness until the computers were able to register that a successful collision had actually taken place. Those moments were quickly replaced by a different, longer awkward silence as the group waited to see if the twin energy waves had actually escaped the containment field and had begun racing around the miles of circular tunnels. Both of those confirmations were obtained within the first fifteen seconds after the collision. The anxiety next shifted to a station-by-station reporting which would take three or four minutes to complete. Everyone was hopeful that the reporting wouldn’t vary from station to station, and that no change in the amount of energy flowing through the tunnels would be detected.

Halfway around the ring of tunnels, just past Station 15, a coupling for the newly installed high-voltage lines feeding into Station 28 had apparently snapped. It would not affect the creation of the anomaly, but it would impact their ability to feed the wormhole with the additional energy needed to prolong its life. That was the only unintentional malfunction that could be identified in the minutes after the collision. When the reports coming out of Stations 26 and 27 showed no abatement in the flow of energy into 28 and virtually no return flow, the entire team breathed a collective sigh of relief. All of the elements under their control which were required to create the anomaly had been delivered into Station 28. Now the birthing processes and properties inside 28 which were still largely a mystery to them would need to take over. Finally, the moment for the call into 28 came.

“Station 28, report…”

“Station 28, this is PD Control. Do you copy?”

“Station 28, please report…”

Each request was greeted with the hoped for silence. They were flying blind once again regarding what was happening inside the remote monitoring facility. The comms maintenance team was standing by. The notes from the prior collision indicated what repairs had been required, so they had an anticipated response prepared. Another team would be dispatched to Station 15 to begin immediate repairs to the high voltage conduit. Pat was adamant that such repairs were of the highest priority. He wanted to begin feeding additional power to the anomaly as quickly as possible. Every moment of delay in effecting repairs would trigger an earlier death to the wormhole, and he intended to buy Monica every last second of time they could possibly squeeze out of the anomaly. Pat wondered if the hard part was over or whether it was just beginning.

~~~~o~~~~

Monica opened her eyes. The first sensations she became aware of were that she was outdoors and she was no longer nauseous. The next sensation was that the temperature of her surroundings was cold. She slid her backpack full of supplies off her shoulders, undid the knots in her thermal jacket from around her waist and pulled the jacket on. She might need to don the wool cap and gloves she had stuffed in the jacket’s pockets later, but for now, the jacket itself offered enough warmth. The surroundings looked similar to those she recalled from Tyler’s videos. She was just hopeful that she had been delivered to the proper destination. Just as Tyler had been unsure of where exactly he had been transported to, all she could really guarantee was that she was no longer inside Station 28.

Monica immediately began going through all the supplies she had brought with her. Despite her mounting uneasiness about the ethics of what she had come to the past to accomplish, she recognized she had signed on for the role of bio-terrorist. The term seemed overly harsh, but it was technically accurate. She was also really an ally of The Golden Horde. She would essentially be insuring that their attempts to bring death in the form of the bubonic plague to the settlers of Caffa were successful. She wondered if she would be able to find Tyler, and if she did, how he would react to her reason for once again venturing through time and her role in bringing death to the past with her…, intentionally.

The vials were intact as were the syringes. She could detect no damage to anything she had brought, and she actually felt better than she had inside Station 28 as the countdown ticked off its final moments. How was it that such a seemingly violent event as the collision of two massive waves of nuclear energy inside a small, confined space could produce a phenomenon that didn’t even damage the paper wrappers holding the syringes? That needed to be added to the mounting list of questions regarding the anomaly and its opening into a world of theoretical physics that had become too real for anyone currently involved to fully appreciate or comprehend.

It was time to make a video. She broke out the small video camera and quickly made sure it was functioning. She decided she needed to explore just a bit before she started recording so she stuffed the camera in her jacket pocket, moved her backpack off the dirt road she had been sitting on and began walking around. She first went to get a glimpse of the anomaly itself. It was exactly where it had been in Tyler’s videos, contained largely within a rocky cavernous depression just below and beside the dirt road. The surface was wavelike, and if she hadn’t already known it was an energy field, she would’ve guessed it was some kind of liquid based on the surface behavior.

Monica decided to head in the direction Tyler had indicated was toward Caffa. Her plan was to see what she could see over the top of the next rise, hoping that would at least provide additional visual clues in the remote chance that any additional missions to this historical nightmare destination might be attempted. The hike over the rise took longer than she expected, and she was surprised at how exhausted the climb had left her. She imagined how difficult it must’ve been for Tyler, first sick with the Bird Flu and then also with the plague to have made this trek. Caffa was still not visible, but she shot video from the top of the rise, panning the camera in every direction and indicating where she believed she was on the video. The walk back down the rise toward the wormhole was much easier. She began shooting the final scene of this first video once she returned to the roadside next to the anomaly.

“Here you can see the wormhole’s exterior again. It looks like it fully encompasses the rocky depression it sits in. The surface looks fluid-like, including splashes of energy which separate from the surface and then fall back to be reabsorbed. In my mind, that implies that there is at least some gravitational effect which is exerted on the anomaly, but I’m not equipped to suggest anything beyond that modest observation. The anomaly demonstrates wave-like properties, flowing from one end to the other. I presume Tyler’s assumptions regarding the direction of the waves correlating to the direction of travel within the wormhole were correct since he was able to return to more or less the present in the first wormhole and send us video documentation in the second. Again, I can’t confirm that, but if you successfully retrieve this SD card from within Station 28 after the wormhole dissipates, then it’s reasonable to assume it does indeed function in that manner. Of course, if I make it back myself, then I’ll just tell you about it.”

Monica laughed, probably more from the nervousness she was still feeling than from any humor she felt from making the remark. After filming the anomaly from all angles, she walked up the hillside. She found remnants of Tyler’s campsite from a couple of months earlier. The remains of a fire and the only slightly buried wrappers of two MRE’s led her to conclude that their efforts to send her to the proper moment in history appeared to have been on target. The discovery triggered a burst of optimism which came through in her voice.

“OK, now it looks like I can confirm that I have successfully followed Tyler’s second time travel path. Although that doesn’t guarantee that I’m still at the proper historical destination time-wise, if we look at the anecdotal data, which suggests Tyler was highly successful in eliminating his introduction of H2N2 to the fourteenth century, then I’m going to assume I am. For sure, the MRE pouches are from his second trip, not his first. That clarifies what I now need to do. For the record, I will attempt to carry out the two prongs of the mission we have outlined in planning. First, I will attempt to more vigorously spread the bubonic plague bacteria. The goal will be to return the impact of the plague pandemic in Europe to a level very near that identified by Tyler in his 2018 version of history. The second prong will be to locate Tyler, and to return to the wormhole before it closes with him in tow. That effort will hopefully result in a return to the friendly confines of Station 28, presumably in or very near 2018, despite my departure in the year 2031. God, this is gonna sound strange to whoever is watching it back at PD. I hear myself talking and still can’t believe I am where I am and when I apparently am. This is Monica signing off for now. I will update as and when I can.”

She pulled the SD card from the camera and walked to the edge of the anomaly. Monica followed Tyler’s instructions and waited until the waves appeared to be headed back toward the future end of the wormhole and tossed the SD card on the surface. She watched it be absorbed and then slowly disappear from view. That initial task done, she realized how exhausted she was. The lack of sleep from last night, despite the fact that it was really almost seven hundred years in the future, was finally taking its toll. One could only run on adrenaline for so long. She opened and consumed her first MRE and lay down on the hillside to rest for a few minutes. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but that’s exactly what she did. She awoke as dusk was arriving at the remote hillside. She broke out her flashlight and scrambled to set up her campsite before the blackness of the night sky fully descended upon her. Tonight would just be a solo campout. Any real progress toward the mission objectives would be forced to wait until tomorrow.

As dawn’s light crept into her tent, Monica awoke. Her teeth hurt from the cold, and it took almost a half hour for the pain in her jaw to fade. She busied herself with several tedious campsite activities until her mouth pain subsided enough for her to eat another MRE for breakfast. Once that was out of the way, she packed up camp and wandered down to the road to check on the anomaly. She had a lump in her throat as she first peeked into the roadside depression. The sight of a shrunken anomaly would tell her instantly that she would never be leaving this place. She let out a slow exhale as the sight of the wormhole, full and as robust as it had been the prior afternoon, greeted her vision. So far, this trip through time had gone more smoothly than she could’ve possibly hoped for. She set down her pack and took the video camera out once again. The video was extremely short. She merely recorded the anomaly, noting that it was now the next morning and she could not detect any shrinkage in the size of the wormhole. She once again removed the SD card from the camera and tossed it into the anomaly when the energy flow was moving in the proper direction. Once the camera was stuffed safely back in her pack, Monica set out in search of Caffa.

The walk to Caffa was slow going. Her pack weighed over fifty pounds, almost half her body weight, and she wasn’t used to the physical exertion. Monica’s mind wandered to her concerns each time she topped another rise without seeing any sign of her destination in the distance. She remembered her time spent in treating infectious diseases in her two summer trips to remote African villages with Tyler when they were younger. She recalled his passion for eradicating disease and healing the sick. His decision to become a virologist and epidemiologist seemed a perfect career choice. How could she be considering doing the opposite? If her parents could see what she was about to be undertaking, what would they think. She had always tried to live up to an axiom her grandfather had shared with her when she was only ten years old. He had said, ‘Don’t ever do anything that you wouldn’t want your Mother to read about in tomorrow’s paper’. What would her Mother think about what she was preparing to do now? What would her grandfather’s advice now be?

And what about Tyler? What would she say to him when and if they met?

“Hi, Tyler. I’m happy to see you. I’m a bioterrorist now. I’d like to ask you to help me kill some people. We can just pretend there’s nothing immoral about doing that. I don’t really mean anything by it. Let’s just block out that part of this whole thing, and hurry up and get this done so we can go home. How does that sound to you?”

She actually spoke the words out loud to herself as she walked, listening to the utter absurdity of her own voice. She had convinced her senior scientists and Colonel James that she was up to the task of doing what needed to be done. She had told them she would focus on the outcome, on restoring history to some sense of equilibrium. She had promised that despite any lingering doubts, she would set aside her personal reservations and qualms and do what was necessary. Now she was struggling with the morality of this assignment, and none of her colleagues were around to convince and encourage her that her path was indeed righteous. She would need to find a way past her current personal ethical crisis. Possessing a conscience was either the most important criteria to own as a time traveler or it was absolutely the worst trait to carry through time. She knew which of those she viewed as the correct side of the coin. It was just extremely inconvenient that it failed to align with the task she was about to undertake.