The Day Before (23 page)

“The bureau issued a splat gun we have for emergencies. Why?”

“You need to start keeping it on you. Call it a hunch, but I think things are going to get worse before they get better.”

 

CHAPTER 23

What keeps our society stable is not our religions, our charitable institutions, or our educational systems. Those are all lovely things but, mathematically speaking, what keeps our society stable is the fact that we have more einselected nodes than other iterations. If we ever lost that, we would lose our primacy.

~ Student notes from the class Physics and Space-­Time I1–2071

Tuesday July 2, 2069

Alabama District 3

Commonwealth of North America

P
ulling away from the donut shop, Sam handed MacKenzie his bagel and smoothie. She'd found him asleep on the couch this morning in his running gear. “Ready to play Agent Bad?”

He took a bite of his bagel. “Sure. What am I supposed to do? Run in and start shooting?”

“We go in, show the lab our warrant, and ask a few questions. I'll start with Matthew Vensula, see if anyone remembers him.”

“It's been three years.”

“I don't care. I'm going to ask about Melody Chimes, too. Maybe she had a roommate, or a boyfriend.”

“Or a stalker,” Mac said.

“A stalker?”

“Someone who wanted to steal her life even more than a clone shadow.”

Sam shook her head with a laugh. “You watch too many movies.”

“You don't watch enough.”

“Novikov-­Veltman Nova Laboratory?” Mac read as they pulled up to the lab. “That's an interesting choice of names.”

Sam glanced up. “It's Russian.” She shrugged. “Not very patriotic, but there's no law saying your heroes have to be American.” She parked her car near the exit just in case they wound up chasing a deranged scientist. She was half hoping it would be that easy. Mac climbed out of the car, towering over her. She squinted against the sunlight, then brushed a crumb from his mouth. “Let me do the talking. Your job is to stand around looking intelligent and mean.”

“Mean?” He looked bewildered.

I'm actually skeptical on the
“
intelligent,
”
too. . .

“Never mind. Can you do cold?” His lip curled a little. “That looks like a bad Sarah Teel impersonation. Try detached.” His hazel eyes went flat and distant. “Perfect.”

She walked into the lab, showing her ID to the security guards, and sauntered over to the main desk. “Are any of the doctors in yet?”

The security guard scanned her badge and pulled up the log-­in screen. “Dr. Emir is the only one in, Agent Rose. He has an experiment in progress and left orders that he's not to be disturbed.”

“That's fine, I can start with the guards.”

“The guards, ma'am?”

She pulled out the warrant. “We have a few questions. We'll need to speak with Dr. Emir, but I can start interviewing the guards if he's too busy.”

The guard's eyes went wide. Forced to choose between protecting the lab from a marauding CBI agent and bothering the deranged doctor, Sam wasn't sure what she would have chosen. Lucky for her, it wasn't a choice she had to make. “Agent MacKenzie, start walking the perimeter, see if you can identify what we were looking for the other day.”

He did a once-­over of the room and gave her a bare shake of his head. The weapon wasn't likely to be here anyway, but it never hurt to look.

“See if you can find where the security circuits connect. The lab never gave us a reason why all the windows were shattered.”

MacKenzie nodded, leaving her to deal with the security guards. She barely had time to ask them how long they'd all worked for the security firm, and had just begun asking if they knew Melody Chimes, when a harried intern came rushing out.

He was a round-­faced, thin man with an already-­receding hairline and near-­black hair. “Agent Rose?” he wheezed. “We weren't expecting you.”

Handing the warrant over for inspection she waved the guards away.

“Murder weapon?” the intern squeaked.

“Murder weapon?” Sam asked innocently. She looked at the warrant with false interest. “That's there for later searches. I'm here retracing the steps of an intern from a few years ago. When did you start working at the lab? It's Henry, isn't it?”

“Troom,” he volunteered. “Henry Troom. I've been here twenty months next week.”

She remembered him now. He'd tried to explain Emir's machine the first time she came with Altin. “You're counting?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I have four months left of my internship, then a semester left before I graduate.”

“In what?”

“Physics and advanced biological sciences,” Troom replied with a bright smile.

“Did you ever meet Matthew Vensula?”

“Matt? No, I never met him, but I've heard about him. I'd got here after he went missing. Everyone was in shock. Dr. Emir said he would go far.”

“Mmmhmm.”
What was it? Less than ten miles to the dump site, wasn't it? Maybe Matt didn't go as far as the doctor anticipated.

Mac circled up to them. The corner of his mouth curved in a smile; he suspected something, but he wasn't going to give it away.

Sam turned back to the intern. “Mr. Troom, is Dr. Emir ready to see us? We need to talk with someone who knew Matt well enough to answer some questions about his recreational activities.”

“Sure.” Troom led them to the right door and to Emir's lab. “Do you think you've found Matt? I know it hit the lab hard when he went missing, I can only imagine how his family felt.”

“We have a possible lead,” Sam said without committing to anything. There was a new set of thick, heavy, armor-­plated double doors. “A new safety feature?”

“Sound-­wave dampeners. Dr. Emir's experiments are reaching a very complex stage.”

“I see.”

Mac cleared his throat. “What is Dr. Emir working on?”

“Ah,” Troom pushed open the door, and Sam was hit by an unseen force.

It felt like a giant pillow had pushed against her body and knocked her back a foot. A warm hand on the small of her back steadied her. She twisted just enough to see Mac frowning, his back pressed to the wall and his hand on her.

“Henry!” Emir shrieked from the far side of the room. “What have I told you about opening those doors? Never open the double doors when the machine is in operation. Someone could be hurt.” He crossed the room in six quick strides, leaving a black china teacup on the edge of one of the desks. The machine sat in the middle of a bare circle with concentric rings marked out in yellow tape.

Sam regained her balance. “Hello, Dr. Emir.”

“Agent Rose.” He pursed his lips.

“I need a few minutes of your time to ask you about one of the interns who worked here in 2066.”

“Bah,” Emir began.

“She has a warrant, Doctor,” Troom warned him.

Emir rolled his eyes. “Very well. For the ever-­insistent Agent Rose, I will make the time. Step into the safety zone, Detective.” He motioned them toward an area behind a green line of tape, where several desks were shoved together at odd angles and piled with the detritus of the lab.

“We are still calibrating the device,” Emir explained. “If you are within the inner radius, there is no effect. I am working to close the wave zone outside that to a minimal level.” He turned. “Run the system again, seven-­A this time.” Emir made a circling motion over his head. The lab workers punched in numbers on a computer behind a heavy metal wall with a glass peephole.

“It looks dangerous,” Mackenzie said.

“Only to the unwary,” Emir assured him. “Now, Agent Rose, what questions did you have that could not wait until later?”

“Do you remember Matthew Vensula?”

“Matthew? Of course, he was one of my best students.” Emir turned around with a frown as if he could conjure the missing intern.

“He did his internship here three years ago,” Sam prompted. “You may remember him leaving?”

“Leaving?” Emir frowned. “Yes, yes, I recall. Such a promising—­” Glass shattered.

Sam spun, dropping to her knees as she pulled a dart-­loaded gun.

Dr. Emir's black teacup lay on the floor, shattered in a circular pattern. “Commendable reflexes, Agent Rose.” Emir patted her shoulder. “Gentleman! Calculate when the next wave will hit. Then try four-­A. We are not making significant progress.”

Mac was studying the cup intently, not moving. She gave him a questioning look, unsure what would trigger another panic attack, but he only returned a slight shrug.

She holstered her weapon and tried to continue with the same nonchalance the men seemed to have acquired. “Do you remember if Matthew Vensula had any friends in the area? A significant other of any kind?”

“Dr. Emir,” Mac interrupted, “what is it that your machine does?” Sam glared at him, but he shifted is eyes enough to show he was serious. She nodded slightly;
Okay—­it
's your show for now.

“Are you familiar with the work of Novikov, Agent?”

“Only a little,” Mac admitted in a distant tone. “He was a Russian science-­fiction writer.”

“Yes, indeed.” Emir beamed at his new star pupil. “Novikov hypothesized that mass could be moved in all four dimensions.”

“Time travel?” Mac asked. “But, surely, you have the paradox that nothing can be in two places at once. That's why time travel doesn't work.”

“Nonsense!” Emir declared. “Are you who you were yesterday?”

Mac considered this, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Exactly?” Emir persisted. “Down to your molecular structure? Down to the chemical base? Of course not. Humans are the very embodiment of the chaos theory. Every thought changes us. A smell can trigger a cascade of hormones and chemicals drenching our system. We change constantly. For my work, humans are useless. What I endeavor to do is much more worthwhile, much more reasonable.”

Sam bit her tongue. It was all nonsense to her, and if Emir started rambling about otherselves and iterations again, she'd shoot him with a dart and call it a day.

Emir waved a hand at his contraption. “This machine does not move living particles back in time but simple wave patterns of molecules.”

“Like Morse code?” Mac raised an eyebrow. “To what purpose?”

“To send information, of course. My predecessors were all grand men of vision. They thought they could change the world by moving themselves back in time, little realizing that time only moves one direction. Time will always move forward. Even if I could send a living thing back in time, which can't be done, you would not have two identical copies with the same history; you would have split history and had two copies of one person. Two separate lives. One of them living in the wrong timeline. The wrong iteration, if you will.”

“Of which, logically, there must be an infinite number,” Mac said.

“No! No, no, no! Think!” Emir yelled. The machine in the center of the room rattled, and fell still. “Four-­A!” Emir called out.

He turned back to them. “This is what everyone believes. This is why they never achieve anything. Think! If I sent Agent Rose back in time, what would happen?”

Mac looked at her. “She'd be angry?”

“Also, dead. Living tissue cannot survive the transfer. But aside from deceased and angry, Agent Rose would be in a separate world. I tried to explain this to your Agent Marrins, but he didn't understand. That man dreams of changing his own past.”

Sam perked up at that but didn't interrupt as Mac continued his interrogation.

“Are we talking about parallel dimensions?” Mac asked.

“Eh, something similar.” Emir waggled a hand in a seesaw motion. “There are only a finite number of universes where there is enough connection for a person to survive. There must be a positive probability of the person's living in that universe for a connection to be made. That was my great discovery.”

Sam fought to roll her eyes. Still, with Mac here, she found she could understand what the pompous Dr. Emir was saying.

“The elements I use to power my machine have an extended half-­life,” Emir said. “When we run power to the core, it creates a ripple. We can control the ripple, and move it backward along the space-­time matrix. In time, perhaps I, or another genius”—­his tone indicated that he did not believe such a person existed—­“will discover a way to turn that ripple into a portal so that larger objects could move along the wave. Now, perhaps I could send something a few atoms thick. Such objects exist, but they are of little use to me.”

Sam raised her hand. “What does that have to do with parallel dimensions?”

“Ah! Excellent! Not many students understand. What we realized in the very earliest of my experiments is that the premise that you could go back and change your own history was wrong. A complete fallacy. The idea of an infinite number of dimensions is mathematically sound but does not hold with the laws of entropy and physics. When you apply the laws of physics to this problem, you see that all iterations of time, all possibilities, must collapse like a wave form. There must be a ground state. Every action you take either moves your timeline closer to the ground state and stability, or to chaos and collapse.”

“I'm confused,” Sam said. Emir looked offended, as if Sam had offered him the deadliest of insults.

Luckily, MacKenzie stepped in at that moment, quickly saying, “He means that even though there is a mathematical possibility that dinosaurs and humans coexist, that possible reality would collapse because the likelihood is so astronomically small.”

“This is true,” Emir agreed, seemingly forgetting Sam's “gaffe.” “Our current available molecules would be too different from those in a theoretical Dinosaur Universe. The probability of your existence there is too low to make a connection. My machine can only connect to universes where there is a high probability of another such machine existing.”