Rebecca dropped the bat, which floated toward the ground in slow motion. Turning, she began to follow Mabry toward her colleagues, but her legs felt as though the air had turned to molasses. Barely able to move through the gelatinous air she began waving her arms, desperately trying to attract their attention, but the group was caught up in its own celebrations and did not notice her. Panic coursed through her body and she felt her heart began to pound and pound and pound and— The numbers on the scoreboard finally reached zero just as the sun disappeared into the darkness. The single deafening clang of a bell reverberated through the ground like an earthquake, and the world went dark as the blackness that had encroached unseen, suddenly swallowed the remaining light.
Rebecca woke from her dream with a cry caught in her throat. Throwing back the sweat-dampened comforter, she swung her glistening legs over the side of the bed and glanced at her alarm clock: three-thirty-eight in the morning.
Grabbing her dressing gown from its hook on the back of the door, she quickly crossed to her computer and turned on the screen, which slowly cast its iridescent glow through the darkened room. Her fingers began to fly across the keyboard as she entered set after set of complicated mathematical equations into the system. Finally, after she tapped the last of the data into the computer, she set the program to calculate—mode and waited impatiently, her fingers drumming anxiously on the desktop as the machine worked toward its resolution.
A minute later, an electronic ping sounded from the computer’s integrated speaker system and the screen changed to display the results of its calculations. Rebecca’s eyes followed the scrolling data as the results marched across the screen. When she reached the final figure she double-tapped the screen with her finger. Without taking her eyes off the screen, Rebecca reached for the phone resting on the desk next to the computer display and quickly punched in the numbers that would connect her with Mitchell Lorentz’s room.
Twenty-Seven
Jim’s phone chirruped insistently, dragging him to wakefulness. Bleary eyed he reached a hand blindly towards the phone, his fingers searching for the speakerphone button.
“Yeah? Hello,” he mumbled into his pillow.
“Jim, I’m sorry to wake you but it’s urgent.” Lorentz’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Can you meet us in the cafeteria in ten minutes, please?”
“Sure,” he slurred back, “What’s up?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.” The line went dead.
Nobody looks good at five-in-the-morning, but as Jim walked into the now brightly lit cafeteria, he decided he would have to amend that belief, because, as he stood in the doorway looking in at those already assembled, somehow Rebecca managed to look radiant.
Her hair was tousled and tangled, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup, yetshe was the most beautiful sight he had ever set eyes upon, Atlantean in her beauty and otherworldliness. She was talking animatedly to Lorentz, who in turn looked tired but his eyes seemed to reflect an excitement and spark Jim had not seen before.
“This had better be good,” said a sleep-gruff voice from behind Jim as Harry edged his bulk through the space between Jim and the doorjamb. “I need all the beauty sleep I can get.”
When she caught sight of Jim walking in her direction, Rebecca seemed to become suddenly aware of her appearance, running a long fingered hand through her hair.
Adrianna was already in the room, she passed Jim and Harry cups of lukewarm black coffee as they sat at the Formica table. Jim knocked back his in one gulp and grabbed a refill from the dispenser before sitting back down. “Now you have my undivided attention,” he said as he sipped from the Styrofoam cup. Rebecca’s eyes met his and she gave him an almost invisible smile.
“Sorry for getting you all up so early, you can blame Miss Lacy for that,” said Lorentz in an attempt at humor, his face betraying the true gravitas of the early morning meeting. “She has something she wants to share with us that I think you will all agree is important.”
Rebecca stood, took a sip from her coffee then began recounting the images she had seen in her dream. Several minutes later, her story complete, the confused eyes of the team stared at her.
“You got us all here at…” Adrianna paused to glance at the large clock fixed to the wall behind her, “five in the morning to tell us about a dream?” The diminutive scientist’s voice was heavy with incredulity, and she ended her question with a frown and a dismissive shake of her head.
“You will have to forgive Professor Drake,” Lorentz said, “I sometimes think that the trauma of the Slip caused her politeness to be left behind in the future.”
Adrianna let out a Humph! and sat with her arms crossed sullenly.
“It’s okay. I think I need to explain something about myself,” Rebecca said turning to face the morose Adrianna. “Since I was a child I have experienced… I suppose you would call them waking-dreams… my subconscious processes information, problems and puzzles in my sleep and then, well, the results appear to me in my dreams.”
“So now you’re saying you have visions?” snickered Adrianna.
“No,” repeated Rebecca patiently. “I’m saying that I have a brain that doesn’t quit when it gets hold of a problem. Even when I sleep, it worries over them. It’s a well-documented condition.”
Jim could feel the tension beginning to rise between the two women, Horatio must have felt it too because he cleared his throat dramatically before asking: “So just what did your dream reveal to you Rebecca? Apart from the fact that I should never play against you in a game of baseball.”
Rebecca either missed the large man’s joke or chose to ignore it because, instead of replying, she stood up and walked to the head of the table. “We’ve been looking at solving the problem of the residual T-fallout all wrong,” she began. Adrianna began to object but Rebecca cut her short. “It’s a simple mistake, understandable under the circumstances, I suppose. We have been treating the signal as if it was indisputably the same signal that left the future when the slip occurred; searching for anything that would have caused the disruption and differences in the original signal to the one we have been receiving and analyzing. Instead, we should have been looking more closely at the signal itself.
Rebecca paused as if to give her next statement more dramatic effect and a sudden smile flickered across her face. “Actually, we should stop referring to it as a signal and instead start referring to it in the plural.”
“Signals?” asked Lorentz questioningly.
“Signals,” repeated Rebecca.
Jim would not have been surprised to see Adrianna slap herself on her forehead such was the suddenness of the realization that crossed her face. It would have been comical if the situation were not so incredibly important. “Of course,” she said. “How could I have been so stupid… it’s a harmonic isn’t it!”
Rebecca’s smile widened as realization swept across the faces of those seated around the table. All except for Horatio Mabry, who continued looking perplexed at his colleague’s revelation. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t understand what the hell you’re all getting excited about?”
“A harmonic,” said Adrianna, “is a component frequency of a harmonic motion, it’s an integral multiple of the fundamental frequency, yet separate and distinct from the overall waveform.”
“There’s more than one frequency in the tachyon wave that was sent?” said Mabry.