“I get it, shut up already.” Caleb blinked and faced Boris. “I saw what you need.”
Boris scanned his eyes, and Caleb knew this was it, he had to sell it or it was over. More, though, he had to be right about Boris. Right about his read of the man and his creation.
There were wild cards, for sure. One huge one, but he had to hope when it flipped over, Lady Luck would throw in a fortunate counter. Otherwise, all was lost.
At least this way, all is lost on my terms, with me fighting it every step. Can’t say I didn’t try.
His scalp tingled, the ground trembled and Boris smiled and slapped his shoulder. “All right then. Let’s see what you’ve found for us. By the way, how was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Scrying this objective.” Boris led him back to the machines and the waiting lab technician there. Caleb wondered if the man had his vision re-jiggered with some projection Boris maintained for him; maybe the tech was in some bright Google-like lab space with a bunch of college interns, heads bobbing to music from ear buds as they went about their work, waiting for this new project to be handed down.
“The Salvation Objective,” Boris said. “That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? So what’d you see, or sense, or whatever you do when you do that thing you do?”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “It was different, but not really. A sense of layers peeling away, like bits of muscle and flesh…”
…slicing free and carefully placed on one side or another for later analysis if necessary. Each gentle cut — tender and ever so thin with a razor-sharp scalpel — chiseled away at this reality or that, presenting the same view but as if in different rooms, with slightly altered wallpaper, paint or window dressings. Slow going at first, and then the scalpel worked as if in the hand of a flawless surgeon on speed: a quicksilver-like alchemist, picking and choosing, digging deeper and strategically cutting and probing the best locations.
“But it wasn’t just seeing the right world, one in which the comet never becomes the doomsday maker. It was also a matter of gathering the more important data, the right quantum signature of that reality.”
Boris cocked his head as he bent over the first desk, sporting a simple laptop that seemed to be the central command. “And how did you do that?”
Caleb shrugged. No need to lie here. “In truth, like everything I do, I can’t always put a description to something so ambiguous and fluid, more like feelings and emotions that sometimes paint pictures or leave me with snippets of reality, like found footage, some more vivid than others.”
“Okay okay, but I know I gave you a heavy lift with this. A frequency…”
That was the tricky part, and to do this right, to convince Boris, it would be just as tricky.
“I saw,” he spoke slowly. “The other Montauk. Took a little peek at their setup here…a lot like you’ve got. Almost the same, in fact.”
Boris narrowed his eyes.
Caleb pointed over his shoulder. “Screen just like this, with that baseline megahertz readout plastered everywhere. Close, but I saw what to change it to.”
“Okay…” Boris bent over his keyboard and started tapping, bringing up a new screen and a listing of fields to complete. “I’ll trust you for now, but if you’re lying…”
“I know, a slow death, followed by torture of all my loved ones.”
“I was going to say, you’ll just be wasting a few million dollars in energy cost and a fraction of this facility’s cost, but otherwise, we’ll know. I’ll come back and reset it and it will be like nothing else has happened.”
“Well then, make sure you do one more adjustment.”
“What’s that?”
Caleb thought for a moment. “Actually two other factors you need but didn’t explicitly ask for, right? Space and time.”
Boris smiled. “True, but not necessary. With the right parallel universe, just asserting you’re correct in your selection is the first step. We can always then, once the bridge is established and a doorway created, fine-tune the destination. I can actually open it myself, once I’ve been there. A little gift they had me practice and practice.”
Boris suddenly snapped his head around, eyeing Caleb in a new light. “Hold on, what else did you see?” He stood up. “What are the temporal and spatial coordinates you’re suggesting?”
Caleb raised his hands. “Oh, it’s right here. Like I said…or at least very close, so I could see the facility and the experiments going on. But…”
“But what time?”
Caleb opened his mouth. Damn it. How to get this by without him knowing? He’d know, of course he’s going to know…
“November fourth, Nineteen…”
Boris’s eyes widened, not at Caleb or what he was saying, as he had feared and thought this one chance would begin to unravel, but at something over his shoulder.
Caleb turned, slowly, just his head and saw—
The man in the hat was there, stepping out of the ether and the plasma explosions. Trench coat swaying, gloved hands swinging with his long arms, shadow over his face, the man approached. Somehow, that cigarette was still there — like a feature stuck to his lips instead of an actual cigarette, as if he no longer needed to smoke but kept it as a remembrance.
Caleb could barely speak. “What’s he doing here?”
“Never mind,” Boris snapped, as he finished tapping keys. “I’m done with the coordinates and we’re going through. God help us — and you, if this is a trick.”
Caleb couldn’t take his eyes off the black blur, highlighted in dancing flames now, as the ridges around the bell began to spin and accelerate.
The Operator — for that’s all Caleb could think to call him at this moment — paused for a second as the air shimmered and waves of pulsing energy rained down from the bell. Boris stood up and moved from the terminal and an instant later appeared at Caleb’s side, with a blurring shadow trail of his other selves phasing along behind him. He said something lost in the crackling energy and the phasing reality. Lights shifted and dimmed, pulsing and flashing, and then the electrical tendrils filled the great space and the bell shone with an unholy crimson radiance as it shuddered and gave off ringing pulses that vibrated and sent ripples through the very air.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and dragged him by the shirt. Stumbling to keep up and then breaking into a run, Caleb followed Boris directly into the mouth of the gaping electricity-framed doorway.
“No, no, no,” Caleb yelled and tried to pull away. “Not me, I don’t know…”
Boris paused at the threshold, now gripping Caleb with both hands around his collar. “Don’t worry, the other you is too far away for you to merge, not yet at any rate.”
“We can both exist?”
“For a short time if not in the same vicinity, to prevent a paradox, but soon you will merge.” His eyes darted back in alarm. “But now, it seems your selection has pissed someone off.”
“Boris…” The Operator slowed, holding up both hands. His eyes captured the electrical pulses and added a hypnotic effect to his appearance, like a master stage magician. “You cannot step through. He’s tricking you.”
Caleb grabbed Boris, prepared to yank him through. Not sure what kind of time that would buy them, if any. If the Operator followed them through, that might end any chance he had. And then a host of other questions tried to surface, most involving paradoxes, cause and effect and non-linearity, except for the big one: How does he know?