History Shattered

Tokamak: A reactor design developed first by the Soviets which offered a key breakthrough in the containment of plasma within a protective electromagnetic field, a necessity in the pursuit of modern fusion research. The Tokamak design allowed the Soviets to deal with fusion reaction temperatures which were years ahead of European and American researchers. Fusion reactions occur most efficiently when plasma temperatures are pushed as high as possible. The Tokamak design produced a donut-shaped torus and led to advancements in the design for modern particle colliders. – DailyTech (Fusion’s Future, November 2010)

Although she hadn’t seen him, and he had sounded both weak and at least somewhat disoriented, Monica was overjoyed that Tyler had managed to survive the anomaly. Despite the brave front she had offered to the team of scientists working feverishly to save him and looking to her for emotional cues, she had feared the worst. It was now time to share this bit of positive news with all of them.

The entire team was once again assembled in the large meeting room. She looked out over the sea of expectant faces, some offering encouraging glances and others almost afraid to make eye contact with her, their fear of bad news winning out.

“Folks…, Tyler is alive. We have established audio communication with him from inside Station 28. It seems likely that he has sustained a concussion, and he is complaining of body aches and a fever, but he’s coherent. I just wanted to let everyone know the good news.”

The room erupted in applause with a few of the scientists offering cheers as well. This was followed by a collective sigh of relief as everyone’s stress level regarding the notion of losing a colleague was allowed to melt away.

“How does he look, and when can we get him out?”

“Both great questions, Frank, but we can’t answer either of them just yet. The energy field, which Tyler, who only knows the physics I’ve taught him is referring to as a wormhole by the way, has not dissipated enough to allow us a visual yet. I can’t tell you whether he’s green or blue or suffering from any phenomenon-related symptoms, although it’s pretty likely that his head will be twice its normal size as he holds this experience over all of us.”

The room erupted in laughter. Tyler was the team’s version of class clown. Monica continued with her limited explanation.

“We also know that Tyler has several deadly viral samples inside Station 28. We need to understand that it’s safe for someone to enter the facility, that the samples are intact…, well, the short answer is that it may be a while before we can get in there. Fortunately, as long as he’s functional and not experiencing some kind of catastrophic, life threatening event, he could survive inside 28 for a month or even longer. We all kinda caught a break on that one.”

“So he thinks a wormhole’s in there with him, huh? Sounds like he’s hallucinating. That should mean that he’s had the opportunity to travel to another part of the universe.”

“Or to another time…”

“Or both…”

The discussion was resuming anew. Now that the scientists knew their colleague was out of immediate danger, their minds were already shifting back to solving the theoretical dilemma that the morning’s failed test had presented to them. Monica held her hand up once again.

“Let’s not encourage Tyler’s already vivid imagination too much. He already has a story that involves him going back in time during the past four hours. I’m sure it’s concussion related.”

“What if it’s not?”

“Then we need to figure out what it really is, and we couldn’t have a better assembly of minds on the planet to accomplish just that. Let’s shift our focus once again. Pat, I want your team re-engaging on the electromagnetic failure theory you wanted to focus on. The rest of us will begin working on all the issues that need to be analyzed to both figure out what has happened to Tyler and what we need to check out before we can get in there to rescue him. I know it’s already been a long and most eventful day, but let’s keep grinding. Any way you slice it, we’re making history today, folks. Let’s finish strong.”

Applause again broke out among the gathering of scientists. There was a definite energy which had flowed back into the team at hearing this news. There were several handshakes, back slaps and high fives being exchanged…, even a few hugs and tears. Times like this really brought the group together. They all had sizable egos, and there were often clashes between competing projects and scientific disciplines, but in this moment of crisis, they had all grabbed hold of the rope and pulled in the same direction. Monica was justifiably proud of her team.

Monica pulled together a small, select group to work on the notion of the energy field being a wormhole. The massive amount of energy and the lead encased Station 28 just might have created an environment conducive to producing what had heretofore been nothing more than a theoretical construct. She desperately wished to include herself as a member of that project’s team, but her role as director prevented it. She needed to manage tasks related to the entirety of the issues they were facing, and she also wanted to be in a position to communicate with Tyler again. No, she instead set about creating several smaller teams, with each assigned a sliver of the current scenario to analyze. She then floated amongst them while occasionally checking in with the military communications room to see if Tyler had re-engaged with them. They informed her that he was ‘off comm’ doing some scientist shit. She was forced to laugh, realizing the soldiers had probably expressed the typical military attitude about almost everything they were doing within PD. Yes, they were all doing science shit, and there was some brand new science shit which had occurred on this day. She wondered if any of the soldiers had even an inkling of the significance of the day’s events. It didn’t matter. She and her collection of nerds most certainly did…, or at least they thought they did.

When Monica finally made her way back to her wormhole team, they were chattering excitedly and quite insistent about talking with Tyler as soon as possible. Until they could get input from him, they felt all they were doing was spinning their theoretical wheels. Monica talked with Colonel James and arranged for the wormhole team to move to Station 3, which was currently unoccupied, where a comm link was established with Station 28. More of the station’s interior was now visible, but the mysterious energy field was still blocking most of the potential image. Audio communications were functioning pretty well, though.

“Tyler, how are you feeling, my friend?”

“Jasmine, is that you?”

“Yes, Tyler, it’s me.”

“You sound tired…”

“It’s been a long day…, but you sound surprisingly youthful and energetic.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that long day shit? Monica implied that, too. It’s been a day-and-a-half for me. How long has it been since the test according to you guys?”

Jasmine glanced at her watch. “It’s been almost five and a half hours now. Are you telling me you think the test happened yesterday?”

“That’s not just what I’m thinking. It’s also what I’m telling you. Either I’ve been having some kind of out of body experience, or I’ve been time travelling.”

“Monica said you thought you were dancing with a wormhole. Why don’t you tell me what you think has been happening since the test. Don’t leave anything out. We wanna hear it all.”

Tyler launched into his story about fourteenth century Crimea, his work as a physician and the exciting face-to-face encounter with the bubonic plague. He then described his return to the energy field next to the dirt road and his subsequent transport back to the interior of Station 28. The team also asked him to describe the characteristics of the anomaly as best he could. Many of their questions were technical or theoretical. His responses, or in many instances his lack of response clearly indicated that quantum physics was not Tyler’s area of expertise. Elsewhere in the facility, Colonel James had instructed his communications team to record every word being exchanged between the scientists in Station 3 and the man currently exiled in Station 28. He was completely unsure of its significance, but he knew enough to recognize the need to record it for future reference, even if this team of scientists didn’t.

“Monica said you thought it might all be a delusion.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought…, for a while. Then I spotted a cut on my finger. I did it to myself while I was performing surgery on one of the soldiers. I didn’t have that cut when the test started.”

“Well, you probably got knocked around pretty good with all that energy flowing into 28. Monica also said it sounded like you might be concussed.”

“When I exited the wormhole I landed pretty hard and banged my head on the tile floor pretty good. I’ve got a lump, and I don’t know how long I was out for, but that has nothing to do with me cutting my finger.”

“You sound pretty sure…”

“Jasmine, I’m not sure about any of this, but I was exposed to bubonic plague in Caffa, Crimea either a day ago or somewhere around three or so hours ago depending upon whether my biological clock is on our time or wormhole time. So it’s reasonable to assume I’ll begin manifesting symptoms sometime within the next day if it really happened.”

“That assumes the disease could travel in time with you, I guess.”

“Well, if my Converse All-Stars can time travel, then I don’t see why a bug that wiped out between 30 and 60% of the European population couldn’t time travel as well.”

“I thought it was more like between 90 and 95% of the European population. Didn’t Europe essentially go dark for the next three hundred years?”

“What do you know about it, Jasmine? You’re Japanese! I wrote my Master’s thesis on The Black Death. Hell, I even spoke Latin in my time travel. But I’ve gotta admit the historical record was pretty sketchy from that period. It was estimated that between 75 and 200 million people died in Europe.”

“For some reason, I seem to recall the number being closer to three hundred million.”

“Shit, Jasmine…, that would’ve wiped Europe off the map.”

“Yeah…, didn’t it kinda do that? But I may just not be remembering it right, so let’s shift gears. A question I feel I need to ask is whether or not you have any bubonic plague samples there in 28 with you?”

“No, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to the greatest killer of all time, but bubonic plague is old news. It can be pretty effectively treated with any number of antibiotics if it’s caught early enough. It’s old news when it comes to infectious diseases.”

“Weren’t you already sick with the Bird Flu this morning?”

“Again, that was yesterday morning, but yeah…, Monica was raggin’ me for not getting a flu shot.”

“As she should have. You should know that more than anybody, Tyler.”

“OK, Mom…, God I’m working with like twenty mothers around here.”

“My point is that if you’re already sick with the Bird Flu and you did contract the plague, then how might that affect the impact of either illness on you?”

“That’s a great question. The H2N2 virus didn’t show up until 1957-ish, so these two bugs have never had the opportunity to coexist. The likely answer is that since the plague already had a lethality around 70%, it would’ve weakened immune systems enough that the Bird Flu could affect what would normally be the healthy part of the population like it does the old or otherwise infirm now. The combined lethality could easily top ninety-five percent. That would definitely be a badass combination.”

“OK, my next question…, do you have any drugs in 28 with you that it might be a good idea to start taking just in case?”

“All I could really treat would be the plague, and even then it might be too late. Antibiotics are extremely effective if administered within twenty-four hours of contracting the bacterial infection. So depending on whether the disease is on the present day clock or the wormhole clock, it might already be too late. But in case it’s now on our time it’s probably a good idea…, except I don’t want to start taking meds until we can determine whether I actually contracted the disease or not. So I’ll have the meds on standby for now. Beyond the antibiotics, staying hydrated and fighting the fever is pretty much the same treatment plan for both. If I start having seizures or lapse into a coma you can probably assume it’s plague, though.”

“How pleasant…, do me a favor and take some meds as soon as you can then. Just consider it more motherly advice. I think we’re done with you for a little while anyway.”

“Good, I need to get back to my viruses. I’ll take an antibiotic soon, though. It couldn’t hurt anything. Now that I’m the world’s only time traveler I don’t really want to kick the bucket.”

“Yeah, you do that. We’ll talk again soon. I suspect the doctors are gonna be poking and prodding you pretty good for a while trying to figure out what, if anything, that wormhole of yours has done to you.”

“You mean besides time travel and bubonic plague…”

“Yeah…, besides that trivial crap. Get some rest, Tyler. From the sound of things, it may be a couple of days before we can spring you from there…, especially if you’ve got the plague…, and then you’ve got lots more fun to look forward to.”

“I thought about that. I guess I better get used to freeze dried meals, and maybe it’d be a good time to get over my aversion to needles, too. Bye, guys.”

When the wormhole team returned from Station 3, their first stop was to brief Monica on what they had learned from Tyler. As soon as she learned about his cut finger and his belief that he had been exposed to the plague, she insisted that Colonel James join the meeting. His troops would be the first to enter Station 28, and any potential sources of pathogens would need to be factored into their approach. Monica started asking questions as soon as Mike was seated at the table.

“OK, Jasmine…, what’s your take?”

“I’ve got several of them actually. First, Tyler sounds great for somebody suffering from the flu, even if his wormhole time travel story turns out to be a delusion. He sounds coherent and is talking like someone who actually experienced his adventure rather than a person waxing about an imaginary episode.”

“What made you draw that conclusion?”

“Well, there’s very little hesitation in his dialogue, and the way he describes it has a level of definition and detail that seems more like a real life description rather than the haziness that would typically be associated with an imaginary event. Then there’s the cut finger…”

“The what?”

“He cut his finger, and he claimed it occurred while he was performing surgery on a wounded soldier.”

Really? Keep going, Jasmine.”

“He’s demonstrating what I can only describe as a grounding in reality. Take the bubonic plague exposure, for example. As a virologist, he was genuinely excited to be able to see the plague in person. But at the same time he also recognized that he should begin taking meds so he wouldn’t die from that exposure. That seems much more like a real life reaction than a delusional one.”

Colonel James finally spoke. “So we may be looking at a contagious disease scenario in Station 28…, is that what I’m hearing?”

“It can’t be completely discounted. I know we all want Tyler out of there as soon as possible, but there may be a very real contamination/quarantine issue at play here.”

“So can we assign a probability to that threat?”

“Well, that’s a tricky question, because it brings up another interesting element. I want all of you to just go ahead and buy into the assumption that Tyler was actually travelling back in time via a wormhole for a minute. I ask you to do that because what we seem to have is a distortion in time, and I’m not just talking about time travel but also how it’s measured. Tyler is convinced that he was in fourteenth century Crimea for a day-and-a-half. It was either late autumn or early winter there, which is certainly at least plausible if he’s time traveling. Just because it’s summer here doesn’t mean it needs to be summer at his destination in time. At any rate, what took a day-and-a-half there only took like three or four hours here. In other words, time either stretched out at the other end of the wormhole or it’s compressed here, depending on the perspective of the observer…, which also happens to correspond to Einstein’s general relativity theory.”

“But it could also just be an indication that he was having a subconscious dream episode.”

“That’s true, but he also described the wave-like behavior of the energy field as it was bringing him back to 28 from the dirt road near Caffa. He referred to it as an energy field. That’s what Tyler’s calling the anomaly when he’s not calling it a wormhole. We could see what looked to be wave-like behavior on the monitor, too…, once we understood what we were looking at, so that matches up. I wouldn’t expect something like that coming out of a delusion, especially since we can visually confirm the phenomenon he’s describing.”

“Is there anything else you think you should share with the group at this point?”

“Well, it runs contrary to my previous arguments, but he seems to have his history confused a bit.”

”Explain what you mean.”

“Well, Tyler said he wrote his Masters’ thesis on The Black Death. Hell…, he was even speaking Latin when he was time travelling. And despite those apparent bits of expertise, he seemed convinced that the pandemic he just visited only wiped out between thirty and sixty percent of the European population of the time, roughly somewhere between seventy-five and two hundred million people. I just checked the internet, and The Black Death was actually estimated to have killed over three hundred million people as it ravaged Europe. The death toll was estimated at between ninety and ninety-five percent of the population of Europe…, about thirty percent of the entire world population. So he’s wrong about that, and not just by a percentage point or two.”

“Tyler wouldn’t be wrong about something like that. I’ve heard him talk about infectious disease outbreaks. Epidemics are his thing and pandemics even more so. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that. He knows The Black Death better than the internet does.”

Monica was insistent as she made that comment. Nobody sitting at the table doubted the sincerity of her belief. Jasmine asked the question that everyone was thinking.

“Well, if he’s not wrong, then what exactly does that tell us?”

“Tyler’s still suffering from the flu, right?”

“Yeah, he says he’s got a fever, and he was coughing some.”

“So what might happen if a scenario wherein the bubonic plague was about to attack a population got further complicated by the introduction of a virus that is particularly aggressive in its effect on victims with some kind of compromised immune system.”

Colonel James, the room’s non-scientist, finished out loud what everyone was thinking.

“Which is exactly what the Bird Flu does. I don’t think I like where this is headed.”

“Tyler kinda answered that one for us, as we were talking about him getting on antibiotics just in case he was now infected with the bubonic plague bacteria. He suggested that the plague’s lethality rate, which was normally around seventy percent, might climb to as high as ninety-five percent.”

Colonel James never cursed, and yet he uttered, “Holy shit…”

“That could account for the change in numbers. That’s how Tyler’s seventy-five to two hundred million Black Death number could be your three hundred million number, and yet you might both be correct.”

“But that would mean that Tyler just re-wrote history…”

“And if this outlandish theory is correct, it also means that he just killed not only potentially over two hundred million people who were living in the fourteenth century, but also all of the succeeding generations those people might’ve produced as well.”

Colonel James let out a long whistle before speaking.

“We could be talking billions with a ‘B’. Mild mannered Tyler may have just become the greatest serial killer in the history of mankind without even the slightest notion that he’s done anything. Wow…, this is really twisted! Tell me you guys don’t think up crap like this all the time!”