The video ended. Jack closed the laptop. “Countermeasure?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t!”
Nick was watching from the far end of the hall, wondering why Mom and Dad were fighting.
Jack let it go. “I say we get this thing fired up.”
Beth wasn’t convinced. “Safe cracking I can wing my way through, but kick-starting a time machine is one of the few things not covered on the Internet.”
“Paul walked me through it. I think I can do it again. How different can it be?”
“That’s not my concern. My concern is that this is a time machine, Jack. As a student of popular culture, I have no desire to go the full Bradbury.”
“Think about it: we fire this up, we go back to before the university incident. We get in there, we stop it, and then this never happens.”
Beth shook her head. “I know you know that’s not possible.”
“Of course it’s possible! We have a-”
Her hands came up, T for time-out. “Stop. It isn’t about going back earlier. It’s about causality. We are here having this conversation because the university happened. If we could go back and prevent the university event from happening-and we can’t-then causality would fall apart.”
Jack’s expression was stage-one grief. She felt like she’d kicked a dog. “We go back, Jack. Of that I’m certain. But it doesn’t play out the way you’d like.”
“You want to explain that?”
“We’re in your brother’s hidden lab. He left a message for someone he’s collaborated with about something called a ‘Countermeasure’-a measure that counters. The only time-machine-related thing that needs countering right now is the Fracture. He just said that the Countermeasure was taken on July 4, 2010. It sounds to me like there’s a chance that we’re the ones who took it. Maybe that’s what we do. Take it, bring it back to our time, and fix the Fracture.”
“And you just pieced that all together.”
“It’s a theory.”
“And you think I didn’t notice who that message was addressed to? September?”
Beth’s heart sank.
“‘Go Team Outland’? Skinny weirdo with a-”
“With a sniper rifle, I get it.”
“You want to tell me what’s really going on here? Zed?”
“I honestly don’t know if Will’s message was meant for me, Jack. I don’t know if ‘September’ is a name I give him at some point. That’s the truth. I’m more interested in the date of that recording. You remember July 4, 2010?”
How could he forget? Sixteen years ago. Paul, Zed, himself at the Overlook. “Aberfoyle.”
“Coinkydink, you think?”
“Coincidence that you disappeared the same day the Countermeasure did?”
“Now wait a minute, that’s not-”
“It’s not what? Paul and I got woken up at four A.M. by three goons who then decided not to kill us because you called their boss. They drive us across town and you pull that magic trick on top of the Overlook. Will-who was being held at gunpoint across town-is suddenly released without question, and later that day his workshop is trashed. Then both you and the Countermeasure disappear on the same day. But hey, now you’re back. And you work for Monarch.”
Beth chewed her lip. “That does look bad doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, Zed, it looks pretty fuckin’ bad.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“If you work for the other side then I can’t stop you doing whatever you’re going to do next. All I can do is ask you not to do it.”
“I’ve always been on your side, even when I left.”
He didn’t want his emotions to dictate what he said next, so he looked at the machine.
“Here’s what I know,” he said, trying to sound confident. “A machine can only take me back as far as the moment of its activation. This machine was activated long before Monarch’s. If it can get me back to just before Monarch’s university machine was activated, then I can find Will. I can save him and he can help us fix this.” Complex arguments weren’t his strength, but he did his best. “Wait, hear me out: just because right now says I didn’t go back and save Will doesn’t mean I can’t make a present in which I did. Proving that I can or can’t change the past is impossible, right? Because whatever the present is it’s connected to a past built on a causality that has denied all attempts at changing it. That doesn’t mean creating one of those alternates is impossible. It just means proving that it’s possible is impossible. Right? All I can do is try and see what happens.”
Nick piped up from the back of the room: “What?”
“You really are Will’s brother,” she said. “I had a few conversations like that, back in the day. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
Jack shrugged. “So maybe stick around this time.”
“Maybe I will.”
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 3:43 P.M. Outside Riverport Swimming Hall. Five hours and thirty-seven minutes later.
Beth snapped off a piece of grass, adjusted her sunglasses. Amber light bounced intensely off the water. “They say the river’s coming back to life these days, since the docks shut down.” Beneath the bridge, on the other side of the broad support across from the swimming hall, reeds poked out of an artificial peninsula of accumulated trash. The ducks didn’t seem to mind.
Jack’s eyes were on the one building that dominated Riverport’s new skyline: Monarch Tower. “The news is saying the gala’s tonight, and it’s going to be huge. Their CEO is launching a whole range of promise-the-world bullshit.” The building was an asymmetrical black obelisk fifty floors high. The Monarch logo-a fragmented, geometric butterfly-glowed incarnadine against that surface of glossy black glass.
“We call it Mordor,” Beth said.
“‘We’?”
“Not everyone in that building is a reptile, Jack. Monarch does well because it delivers on most of its promises. Look around. Remember what Riverport was like when you left? It was devolving into this.” She jerked a thumb toward the discarded neighborhood around them. “Massachusetts flyover country. Not even a second-rate cousin to Worcester. Six years later and look at it: dog walkers and artisanal coffee and people who couldn’t afford a trailer are now bitching about their McMansion not having a Ping-Pong table.”
“I’m going to use that machine, Beth. I have to.”
“I know.”
“I could go back early enough to stop Paul going through, y’know. Stop him turning into whatever he is now.”
“You can try, you’re right about that.”
“You’re not going to stop me?”
“I don’t need to, Jack.”
“You’re very relaxed about this.”
“Want to see a trick?”
“Sure.”
Beth reached into her pocket, pulled out two sets of soft foam earplugs. Handed one to Jack and put hers in. Jack did the same, skeptically. Then Beth pulled out a revolver.
“Uh, you got that where?”
“Nick’s glove compartment.” She snapped the cylinder open, popped out all six shells, put one back in. The barrel chittered when she spun it, then she snapped it shut.
“I’ve seen this movie. Knock it off.”
Beth pressed the barrel to her head-
“No!”
– and fired.
Click.
Jack made a grab; she sidestepped.
Click.
He grabbed again. She deflected.
“Stop it!”
Click.
“Zed!”
The gun was still to her head. “If I stop, you won’t get it.”