It was only a matter of time.
Part X
Outcomes & Consequences
“In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.”
28
Kelly was working feverishly at the Chamber Mix Controls. The particle infusion looked good, but he was worried that the element levels would not give him enough density to trigger the final retraction. He nudged the levels again, adding weight to the mix until he satisfied himself that there was little more he could do. A glance at the clock set his heart racing. He had to get full power now, or they would lose Paul forever. He raced to the main console thumbing the intercom to shout through the microphone. “Clear that Arch corridor, Maeve! I need to ramp this baby up again.” There was a burst of interference and he passed a breathless moment, looking at Jen as they both listened for a response. Then Maeve’s voice returned, faint but audible.
“It’s Nordhausen, and we’re clear, Kelly. Go get Paul!”
“Roger that.” Kelly waved at Jen with a winding motion of his wrist, and she toggled a switch on the board to open the floodgates of energy required for a time shift. The building seemed to shudder in response, and Kelly only hoped the turbines would hold out another five minutes.
“Ninety-five,” Jen called out the readings. “One hundred!”
“I’m on it!” Kelly moved quickly, his hands streaking over the controls to enable the retraction scheme. “Those focal routines still look good,” he said aloud. “I think we have a pattern lock.”
Jen was a bit flustered in the excitement of the moment, but she fell back on familiar ground and began reading the shift monitor for temporal integrity. “Green at 1.00,” she said, excitement rising in her voice. “Zero variance.”
“Come on in, Paul. Come on now, buddy.” Kelly watched the neon glow of the progress bar until it traversed his screen to finality. “I think we’ve done it!” He clapped his hands with jubilation.
Even as he turned to flash a broad grin at Jen, a sharp spat of energy leapt from the main console and a shower of sparks cascaded from the winking rows of display lights. Kelly made a fast cutting motion across his neck. “Cut the power!” He yelled over the fuming explosion but was cut off from Jen’s station by a sheet of white flame.
“Shit! God damn electrical fire!” He whirled around, looking for an extinguisher.
Jen managed to deactivate the main power switch, and the explosive fury of the fire dissipated in a shower of sizzling sparks. Kelly was across the room, his elbow smashing the glass door of the extinguisher closet. He dragged out the dry chemical extinguisher and pulled at the safety tab as he ran back to the console. Jen was leaning back from the blazing panel and shielding her eyes from the white tongues of flame. Kelly waved her away, and the hollow whoosh of the extinguisher spat its chalky vapor on the blaze, enveloping it in a billowing fog. After three intense bursts from the extinguisher, the fire hissed out and thin curls of dark smoke spiraled up from the display board.
“Jen, get down and tell Tom to roll everything back through standby. He can take it down to zero in ten minutes. There’s nothing else we can do with the console in this shape. I only hope we managed to pull this off.”
A voice crackled from the intercom speaker below. “You’ve landed your last fish, Kelly.”
“Thank God.” Kelly suddenly felt faint. The tension of the last several hours all seemed to unwind and his arms and legs felt like jelly. “I better sit down for a minute.” He looked for a chair, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Congratulations, Mr. Ramer.” Jen gave him a warm smile, glad that the project had been successful. Then she turned to run to the staircase. “I’ll tell Tom to shut everything down.” She slipped through the door and was gone.
Kelly slumped in a chair, breathing hard. He decided to lower his head to his knees to get some blood flowing. How could he be so light headed with his heart pounding like this? The adrenaline of the retraction and the fire emergency was still driving his pulse in a feverish rhythm. He gained a little clarity of thought and looked around the room.
We did it, he thought. We pulled the whole thing off! He glanced at the clock and saw that they still had another three minutes before the first tsunami waves were due to hit the coast off Cape Hatteras—if there was still any emergency at all. Where was that radio Nordhausen had with him? He looked around, hoping to see the shortwave sitting comfortably on a nearby console, but it was nowhere to be found. Then he remembered what Paul had told him about the book. If they altered the time line the book should change as well. All he had to do was read the passage Nordhausen had marked for him. How did it go? The echo of Paul’s words returned to him. He was supposed to read up on the second train. If it gets through without incident, everything would be fine. Everything fine…
He stood up, on unsteady legs, and shuffled to the desk where they had hidden the book away. The drawer was slightly ajar, but he gave it no heed. He reached down, missing the drawer handle at first and groping to take hold and pull it open. There was nothing there but a few file folders. Did he have the right drawer? A check of the others came up empty. The book was gone.
Kelly stood there, a bemused expression on his face. It was gone. Something had happened, he thought. Something knocked old Lawrence right out of the God damned time line! He never wrote his book! It was the only possible explanation, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly dizzy.
“Crap…” he said aloud in a low voice. His mind played out a thousand possibilities, imagination painting the images in his head in a flashing rush. They did something to contaminate the time line, he thought. Lawrence may have been exposed or even killed. Maeve tried to warn us about this. You don’t fool with a Prime Mover! Something happened to prevent him from writing his book.
A voice intruded on the stillness of the room “You there Kelly?” It was Maeve speaking over the intercom again.
He forced himself to move, leaning in the direction he wanted to go and hoping his feet would stay under him. The microphone on the desk… The microphone…
“You there, Kelly? Answer me!” Maeve’s voice had a frantic edge to it.
He reached out for the mike, getting one hand on it as he spoke. “Book’s gone…” His voice sounded so strange to him, thin and distant.
“What? Kelly? Thank god! You’re OK.” The sound of someone else speaking in the background came to him and he recognized the voice of his long time friend. “Hey there, mister! Spent a lovely couple of hours in the park. Nice going, Kelly. I knew you could do it.”
The voices sounded far away, like distant memories. It was Paul! He was alive and well. Kelly smiled, lowering himself slowly to a chair by the microphone. “The book…” he tried to speak but his voice was unwilling.
“I’ve got it here!” Maeve seemed elated as she spoke, yet her words were an echo in Kelly’s mind now, quavering through his thoughts with an almost haunting resonance.