The pathetic sight of Snow’s maw twitching with a constant spasm seared itself into Blake’s mind. He arched a brow. “You were saying?”
Amhurst cleared his throat and began again, “It would appear that the watch only takes with it the same organic material that matches the genetic coding, preserving only the traveler. Anything that is not the same as the traveling host — but is within the immediate area around the jumper — is snatched up with it in the process of teleportation. Perhaps if Snow had been closer to the circle, this would not have been the result.”
“You said, ‘Anything that is not the same.’ So would it not happen if they were twin rats?”
“I suppose, but they would probably need to be touching, just in case. Otherwise, the outcome might be the same.”
“Well, I say we iron out the kinks a few more times just to be sure. I’d like to make it home in one piece.”
“I do have one more quick test to run,” Amhurst said slowly, like he was thinking about something else. “I need to check the surviving rat’s exposure.”
He opened a nearby drawer and pulled out something Blake didn’t recognize.
“What is that?”
“It’s a Geiger counter. I’m curious if White was dosed with radiation. This will measure the RADS.”
He aimed the gadget at the container and powered it on. Static bursts and popping noises came from the device in Amhurst’s hand. “Hmmm … it appears our little guy was exposed.”
“What does that mean?” Blake asked.
“It is low emission, but death will be inevitable.”
“Imminent death?”
“For this fella, a month or so maybe. For a human, a while longer I suppose.”
“Well we don’t want that, do we?” Blake edged around the table to get a look at the readings that he had a feeling he wouldn’t understand.
“Whoa!” Amhurst blurted out, startling Blake. “That’s odd.”
“What? What’s odd?”
The doctor blinked in confusion. “It stopped. It just stopped. The radiation stopped emitting.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure.” Puzzlement crossed Amhurst’s face, and he checked the handheld device again. “It’s almost like White was irradiated and then magically there was nothing.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
Amhurst faced him, frowning. The erratic fizzle and popping sounded again.
Blake froze. Amhurst gaped. They both looked down at the Geiger counter.
It was pointed directly at Blake.
47
The Strongest Guard
Blake was the first to speak after recovering from the shock of their new discovery. “We can’t tell Tobias. This puts a whole new spin on the situation.”
“I believe he has a right to know he is going to die.”
Blake glanced at the stairway and lowered his voice. “Screw that. So am I, but think about what happens if we let someone know their own future. It’s bad enough I’ve had a glimpse of mine, trying to make sure things stay together, and treating each day like a house of cards about to collapse.”
“That was the whole point in using time travel — to change things for the better.”
“For the better?” Blake scoffed. “Don’t you see the ramifications of this? Small changes now make for huge differences in the future. Look at Tobias. Look at me. The contrasts between us are stark. It’s mind boggling enough that both of us are putzing around here. What happens when there are three of us in 1986?”
The doctor crossed his arms, bringing a skeletal hand to his face as he mulled over the situation.
Blake couldn’t resist the opening granted in this moment of silence. “Think about the timeline, timestream, or whatever you want to call it. It’ll get more mucked up and convoluted the longer this goes on. I admit, this seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it’s become nightmarish.”
Amhurst gawked at him. “Are you suggesting we kill Tobias to ensure he no longer mucks with your history?”
“Geezus no!” Blake said, horrified. Then, unbidden, the thought fluttered into his mind as if it were a viable option. What would happen if he killed Tobias, here and now? It wasn’t really murder was it, if you killed a version of yourself? Could it be possible — if such a thing as souls existed — that Tobias and Blake, despite being the same person, actually possessed different souls? And if one believed in God, would it not then be murder to kill a soul?
Or would it?
This line of thought woke something deep inside of him, an internal earthquake shaking his foundation, and he flushed red at the thought of the unknown Judgment Day, and what may come.
The repercussions of such an action as killing his double stirred like a dream coming to life. If he ended Tobias’s life here, then in the future, Ethan wouldn’t become the person he was today. He would still eventually become Tobias Version 1.0, the meek little man upstairs. Just like Amhurst said.
Sure, he could play the part of Tobias and step in to prevent the plane crash death of their parents, but the fact remained that mentally, he wasn’t Tobias. Perhaps he wouldn’t say the right things at exactly the right time and those events would still fly off course.
Unless it had already been that way before, and that he himself was the one that had undone everything — that here and now is when and where he created a new string. Blake slapped his hand against his face. It was impossible to get a grasp on the whole concept of time being unchangeable. And yet not.
Blake spoke his next thoughts aloud for Dr. Amhurst. “If we kill him, then he changes nothing regarding our parents — my parents — in the plane crash. A loop continues with his upbringing alone, and no uncle to help him through life. Then someday, Ben Wallace comes along and sends him back here on a fool’s errand as a test subject, and in the end, the Sons of Stalin still exist.”
“What do we do then?”
Blake felt like he was in the hot seat. Amhurst may carry the bulk of the blame for what had happened so far, but now the rest depended on what Blake decided was right. The reality of this responsibility shift stalled his brain.
“We could —” Amhurst began.
Blake threw up a finger to shush him. “I’m thinking.”
The doctor pressed his lips together and fidgeted with a piece of equipment while he waited.
Blake tuned out the background noise as he debated his options. Then he had an idea. “Okay, we need to send him back. The watch works with the changes you’ve made; we can iron out the little kinks. We let him save them from the plane crash.”
“And the car crash too?” Amhurst asked.
Blake swallowed over the pain that question brought. Saving his mother and father had been the guiding force that put him in this very spot, across time and the world to stop Gernot — and now he was abandoning them.
Yet he knew that if he allowed that change, he wouldn’t know what his future held and where his newly shaped life would take him. The only thing he was sure of was what would be waiting for him when he returned if he allowed Tobias to stop his parents from boarding the plane.
His throat tightened, refusing to let him release the words, then he found his voice. “No. I can’t risk that, but perhaps there is something else I can do.”
“Which is?”
“As things stand now, it’s a given that both Tobias and I succumb to this radiation poisoning,” Blake said. “But there might be a possibility I can end this whole time travel incident. I need to change 1986 by stopping my future self from ever going back. At least this way, one of us can live.”