“Maybe its interference? Some spurious emission?” He leaned in closer. “Have you run diagnostics on the receivers?”
“Yes. That was the first thing I did. All the results came back clean. I cross-referenced the data against the paper records in case the information has been corrupted somehow—that came back negative. Then I checked the maintenance logs for the monitoring receivers, nothing unusual there either.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, biting her bottom lip as she gazed at the screen. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” she repeated.
Jim went back to his own desk and wheeled over his chair, steering it next to Rebecca’s. They had been sitting in front of the computers for the past seven—hours straight, and Jim caught the faint aroma of her musk floating across the narrow space between them, as he sat down next to her.
“Well it’s not like we have anything better to do,” he said through a smile. “Let’s see if we can’t figure this out.”
Rebecca half turned in her chair and faced him, her own smile matching his before turning back to her keyboard.
Jim felt a growing respect for the woman who sat at his side. In the five weeks since both he and Rebecca had agreed to join the team he’d had little personal time with most of his new colleagues. The work had been intense and relentless. But not long after he had arrived at the labs, Mitchell Lorentz had pulled Jim into his office and explained to him that Rebecca was one of the tens of thousands of revivified who had originally died at the hands of another in their original timeline. At first, Jim hadn’t understood what the professor was telling him, but eventually the realization of what had happened to her sank in: she had been murdered. Lorentz had not disclosed the details of how she had died, and Jim wasn’t sure he really wanted to know them, not yet anyway.
Jim found it incredible she could function at all after Lorentz’s revelation, but his incredulity had quickly turned to admiration as he witnessed the single-minded dedication with which she immersed herself in her work. Lorentz also told him that part of the reason Rebecca had accepted the position on the team was that the professor had promised her that once they had ensured the safety of humanity, the government would turn its attention to locating and apprehending the man who had committed the wicked crime against her.
“I even offered to have the investigation commence immediately,” Lorentz had said, “but she said no. She wanted to wait until this was over. No distractions. That’s a dedicated woman.” Jim was not sure whether that was an indication of her strength of will or of her grasp of reality, but after spending the past few weeks in her company he was leaning towards the first explanation.
What he did know was that he liked being in her company and he found himself taking advantage of any opportunity to be with her that presented itself.
For six more hours, they worked at the keyboard of her computer, running over the data collected during the period just after the Slip occurred, through to the present day. She was indefatigable; checking and rechecking data. They cross-referenced all the information collected by the mainframe system with the paper printouts she had pulled from the systems. Those systems were linked directly to the tachyon receivers that continuously monitored the ether, pulling in the tachyon fallout from the slip.
Sitting next to Rebecca now, listening to the soft lilt of her voice as she read data to him from a large printout of concertina-paper, Jim realized his respect was turning into something more. It was normally just a fluttering distraction in the back of his brain but being this close, his attraction to her became overwhelmingly diverting, and he felt his concentration wavering. Instead of focusing on verifying the figures on the screen, he found himself tracing the outline of her face with his eyes as she read from the computer printout resting on her knees. He allowed himself to follow the curve of her nose to the fullness of her lips. From her lips his eyes flowed over her chin and traced the arch of her throat until— “Jim? Are you alright?” She was staring right at him, a perplexed smile on her lips, her head tilted questioningly to one side.
“Umm!” he stuttered. He felt his face flush. “Hey! It’s getting a little late, don’t you think?” he said glancing at his wristwatch. “Maybe we should call it a night?”
“Okay. But are you sure you’re all right? You look a little flushed.”
“I’m fine, just a little bushed,” he said, standing. “How about we pick up from where we left off in the morning?”
Rebecca smiled up at him from her chair. “It’s a date,” she said playfully and Jim couldn’t help but let out a stutter of laughter.
Half way to the door, he turned and looked back at her watching him leave, and then, after a moment’s pause asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like—“
Before he could finish, she was standing and making her way to join him, “I thought you would never ask.”
It was eleven-fifteen at night and the refectory was cloaked in darkness save for the green electronic glow of the digital clocks of several microwave ovens. Jim stood in the open doorway allowing the light from the corridor to illuminate the room while he searched the wall for the light switch with his free hand. Finding it, he flicked the bank of switches and the overhead lights flickered on, pushing back the darkness.
“Welcome to Chateau Baston,” he said in his best mock French accent while holding open the door for Rebecca.
They made their way over to a rack of glass-fronted refrigerators. Peering in at the stacked racks holding an assortment of readymade sandwiches, pies, cookies, and candy, Jim continued his impersonation, “On tonight’s menu we ’ave…” He pushed the button to rotate the plates of food around the cabinet, “… Bologna sandwiches—sans mayo. Fruit pie and…” after one more row of plates whirred into view, “…the piece de resistance—macaroni and cheese.”
Through a half suppressed fit of the giggles Rebecca managed to blurt out her choice: mac and cheese.
“An excellent choice, mademoiselle, if I do say so myself. Let’s make that two.” Jim carried the cardboard containers of ready-to-heat food over to the bank of microwaves and placed them inside.
“Not bad. Not bad at all,” said Jim, a few minutes later as he tasted his nuked meal.
“So tell me something about yourself, Jim, “Rebecca asked, as she sipped from a can of diet cola.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything,” she said, then added, “We’ve worked so closely since we got here but I know so little about you. Mina said you were a writer. What did you write about?”
Jim swallowed the remainder of the food in his mouth and patted his lips clean with his napkin before replying, all the time keeping his eyes focused on the beautiful young woman who sat across the table from him.
“Science fiction… mostly. That was what I was well known for but when the Slip happened I was finishing up a personal work.”
“Your autobiography?” she guessed.
“I suppose you could call it that. It was more an accounting of my life. I never really intended to publish it, but don’t tell my agent that. Like I said, it was a very personal book for me. I felt I needed to bring some strands of my life together that had slipped away from me. Do you know what I mean?”