“Yes, you have at most three 24-hour periods before it loses its juice, each allowing only 30 seconds of communication per 12-hour pop. That gives you at most six opportunities to communicate, probably half that, depending on its power. When you have to come back, press the button twice and put the BAT down. Purdue, there is no undo button once you have done that. Trust me. Make sure you are ready to return before you press that button twice.”
Her eyes pierced him with urgency and serious caution.
“Now… at the moment you transcend from this point this device here will record your unified fields’ references and keep it saved in its data bank,” she continued. In her hand she held a delicate item, a pinkish, semi-transparent dental plate fashioned from the roof of Purdue’s mouth. “You need to remove this and used the wire that hooks around your two canines to plug it into the BAT before that double-button activation, are you clear on that?”
“My God,” Sam whispered.
“What’s wrong, Sam?” she asked him.
“I am just… in absolute awe of your planning, your inventions,” he exalted her, hitting that welcome zone of narcissism in Lydia. “It blows my mind!”
Purdue smiled at Sam’s clever manipulation by means of that familiar charm that stole Nina from Purdue’s embrace a few years ago. He had to admire the schoolboy charm of the dark eyes journalist with his stocky athleticism and wild black hair. Inside, Purdue knew full well that Sam’s exclamation was in fact one of subdued terror, the type unleashed from a confrontation with unbridled madness.
On the wall clock the long hand reached six and the short arm pointed just short of nine. The weather was slowly growing more restless. Healy came down from the second story and reported, “Madam, there is a severe thunderstorm headed this way within the next few hours, moving over from Switzerland and due in the south of Germany by tomorrow afternoon, they say. I venture to guess it is a rather serious storm for most of Western Europe.”
“Thanks Healy. Do you hear that, gentlemen?” Lydia asked.
Purdue shook Sam’s hand and gave him a pat on the back, using his nonchalant approach to serious things to show Sam that he had no faith in the potency of this experiment. He stepped into the buzzing environment of the chamber that was now at the threshold between warming up and powering up for the actual initiation of the launch.
Light rain tapped against the windows by now and the wind bent the tree tops outside, but the people in Jenner Manor had no idea, thanks to the boarded up windows and walls keeping out all external sound. It was a dangerous ignorance that would influence their time sensitive experiment. Healy locked Purdue in the chamber as Sam filmed it.
Sam hoped that the experiment would come to nothing but a big ruckus, a jolt or two and a circuit blown on the mother board of the controlling computer before Lydia would realize it was just another failure. Then she would go back to the drawing board with her theories and allow the men to have a fee drinks while they watched the football at a local sports bar. That was Sam’s ideal outcome in the cozy safety of his mind.
Lydia looked into the lens, but she was not speaking to Sam. “Voyager III, time travel experiment number 14, 22 June 2015 in Jenner Manor, located in the city of Lyon, France. Subject: Inventor and scientist David Matthew Purdue, aged forty nine and the time is now…” she looked up, “…8.30 in the evening.”
She gestured for Sam to follow her to the control board. On the keyboard she punched in a combination code and the schematic from the map-like paper on the table came up on the screen. Color coded numbers in sequence ran upward as the heat index rose outside the chamber to facilitate the acceleration of the unseen particles inside with Purdue.
The weather rumbled, but Lydia heard nothing. Only Healy discerned something with his keen ears aided by the slight cold draft that crept under the door down the hallway. While they did not need him he quietly made his way to the kitchen and the back door to ascertain the authenticity of the sensation.
“Oh my God!” he gasped as he entered the dark kitchen, the only normal room in the entire mansion. The windows clanged with the heavy downpour which had broken out over Lyon in the last fifteen minutes. Under the door the water was spraying in, wetting the tiles. As the butler placed some newspapers in the slit under the door the thunder bellowed, releasing three rapid flashes of lightning before he pulled his hand away in fright. Healy was a tough, steely operative in his day and even now there were few targets that could elude his aim. But one thing nobody knew was that Rupert Healy was terrified of thunder and lightning.
Petrified, but aware that his job could never suffer under his phobias, he slipped away and returned to the lower level of the house where there was life, and safety from the horrendous nature that sought to do him harm. But as Healy turned the corner into the corridor that led to Lydia and her friends he noticed that the lights were flickering profusely. Clearing his throat under the discomfort of the situation Healy progressed down the almost dark passage, certain that he should not share the weather conditions with an already on-edge Lydia.
A leak inside the wall moistened the plating, an honest mistake by Lydia and Healy not to have noticed before. Rains like these were not a common thing and they had no way of knowing that the plating in the chamber room was being compromised. At the height of the ignition the small window to the chamber was illuminated entirely in bright white light. Sam filmed, but his terrified frozen gaze was fixed on the rays that had now eaten up Purdue’s silhouette.
But Lydia paid no attention. She turned a huge dial, and old fashioned knob that initiated the sound factor, a pulsing ultrasound wave that sounded like an unborn heart on sonar, only deeper and slower. Lydia’s chest heaved with the excitement of her experiment coming to fruition and a crack of a smile started on her face. A mighty clash cracked in a majestic bouquet of sparks from the wall plating and throughout the house the power died instantly.
“Oh, Jesus Christ! No! Oh my God, no!” Healy heard Lydia scream. She was hysterical, going off on a surge of curses as she frantically flicked switches in the dark. “Healy! Do something! Get the circuits running!”
“On it, Madam!” Healy cried as he scuttled for the circuit board.
“What do I do, Lydia?” Sam shouted.
“Just keep filming,” she said with an uncontrolled quiver in her voice.
With a jolt the electricity came on, but what they could not hear sealed Purdue’s fate. Outside a massive bolt of lightning struck the house, utilizing the reinforced walls to conduct the overloaded current. Its force intensified not only the marked fields but also overloaded the sonic aspect. Healy covered Lydia with his body while Sam fell backward to the floor as the chamber glowed with fire, but as soon as they beheld it, space swallowed it up.
“The fire disappeared into nothing!” Sam screamed, recalling Tägtgren’s story vividly.
Panting and terrified Sam and Healy stood helplessly waiting for the chamber to cool down. They had no idea if Purdue was alive. Behind them in the stench of fire and smoke Lydia smiled with relieved satisfaction.
“Sam,” she said calmly, “tell me you captured that on film.”
Chapter 13
Nina Gould was home for the first time in months. Her restored home in Oban, Scotland, needed a serious cleaning. Thanks to the superstitious folk of her home town, whereto she had returned two years before with the purchase of said house, few cleaning ladies agreed to keep up the place while she was away. Once or twice a month the forty one year old history lecturer and advisor would fork out some extra dough to bring a cleaning service in from Edinburgh. She also used to hire McDusty Domestics from Argylle when she lived in Ediburgh, because she was pedantic about service. This was why she figured they would do nicely for the old property in Oban she almost lost two years ago, hardly two days after she had purchased it.