With a cry of relief Paul spun for his escape.
Waiting inside was the biggest Shifter either of them had ever seen: broad across distorted shoulders, its thrashing head snaking three ways through space. One distorted flashing shadow of a paw grabbed the lip of the airlock, levering itself forward as its second hand reached out, into the room, for Paul’s face.
The center of that hand shone with light.
Backing away Paul let it all go and screamed-because it was going to be the last thing he would ever do.
The Shifters rushed forward, half their frames missing as they flick-vaulted through space, over workbenches.
Beth hit ACTIVATE.
The chronon distortion wave kicked off the Promenade, hit the Shifters, and for a moment-as when Paul had saved Beth from them a few hours ago-they vanished.
It was all Paul needed. He was gone, in a blink, through the airlock. Beth swore and vaulted after him. She barreled up the two-step ladder and into the airlock as the distortion wave subsided and the Shifters phased back in. The big Shifter, Shining Palm, half out the airlock door, had time to roar once before Beth was through the right-hand door behind it. It locked behind her and…
Silence.
As fast as she could she ran-not to 2010, but toward the date Paul had set.
She ran to 1999.
18
Sunday, 28 February 1999. 8:53 P.M. Riverport, Massachusetts.
William Joyce, twenty years old, finished his celebratory cocoa, rinsed the ceramic Riverport Raptors mug, and returned it to the cupboard above the sink. The house was dark, silent. He had taken Jack, his younger brother, over to the house of the Serene family. He’d be staying for the night.
Tonight solitude was imperative. Tonight Will would undertake a journey of great risk. One he had worked toward since he was a boy of fifteen. Utilizing grant money, academic connections, and a falsified passport he had secured through-of all places-a local biker bar, William Joyce had financed the construction of a device that learned men and women many years his senior had laughed off as ridiculous, impossible.
Screw those guys.
William zipped his jumpsuit to the neck, ensured his canvas utility belt was securely fastened. Clipped to it was everything a chrononaut might possibly need: penlight, cell phone, a roll of elastic tubing, alligator clips, pens, waterproof notebook, a digital multilanguage translator he had bought from a magazine, a canvas pouch containing aspirin and iodine and antimalaria medication. Around his neck were binoculars and a Brownie camera. Beneath the jumpsuit was a secondhand bulletproof vest.
The pack on the kitchen table contained a change of clothes, a bottle of water, three cans of spiced ham, seven novels, an edition of that day’s New York Times, and an untested chronon storage device-painstakingly charged over a period of years that he was fairly sure had been adequately shielded.
A note rested on the kitchen table beneath a thin vase. It read:
Dear Reader,
If you have found this letter, then I am gone. Grieve not for me, but make proper use of the gift I have left mankind. In the old barn, sitting stately outside the casement of this very kitchen, is a time machine.
Yes! You read that correctly! A time machine!
I bequeath now to the government of the United States, who are best equipped to plumb the secrets and discoveries I have made, catalogued extensively in the notes I have left behind, the right to license my work for the betterment of mankind. I leave the negotiations to Mrs. Serene of 94 Chestnut Avenue, who has more experience in these things than I.
As to my brother, Jack, I bequeath to him all the proceeds and royalties from all goods and services based upon my research, discoveries, inventions, and intellectual property. Additionally, this shall cover all costs of his being cared for by the Serene family of 94 Chestnut Avenue, as they continue to foster and care for him up until the age of 21.
All I ask is that great care be taken with the Chronon Core™ for as long as it remains active and connected to my beautiful Promenade™. I may yet-someday-return.
Look for me in the year 2019.
Ad futura, ad astra.
– Dr. William Joyce (qual. pending)
William read the note one more time, nodded with satisfaction, hoisted his travel pack, and marched for the barn-stopping only for one last backward glance. How he wished his parents had lived to see this moment.
He opened the front door and, hunching against the icy winter air, closed that chapter of his life with the thunk of a lock.
An inch and a half of snow had fallen the night before, and several inches that month. William was pleased that he had invested his few remaining dollars in the sturdy utility boots he had found at the thrift store on River Street. They kept the moisture out well, the snow crunching satisfyingly beneath their worn tread. Warm light fell in subtly fanning lines from between the boards of the barn across the garden: amber illumination sparkling white, glowing moonlight blue. With shaking hands, he unclipped his key rings and snapped loose the three padlocked chains from the flimsy barn door. Gravity snaked them eagerly through their iron loops, sending them clinking heavily into the freshly packed snow.
Stepping into his barn laboratory he pulled the door closed behind him. It was only a few degrees warmer inside, made so by the grumbling generator and the ambient temperature of his beautiful Promenade and its stout, multifaceted heart.
William surveyed his kingdom, nodding as he found each essential piece as it should be. The generator: jouncing and thrumming. The chronon capacitor: running a little hot, but the charge at 100 percent. The departure station, created from a dozen PCs running in tandem, the date prominently onscreen in satisfyingly retro font: November 1, 2019. The systems monitoring station: online, all gauges reading nominal. That would change once his creation was brought to life. Which left the core.
The core was offline. Utilizing a 10,000-terahertz laser, small quantities of multiple isotopes, a small reaction chamber within a nuclear research lab at a South American university, a homemade carbon launcher, and a supercomputer, William had fabricated within a magnetically sealed geometric sphere one stable and relatively safe microscopic black hole.
That’s what was resting at the center of the machine, within that sphere, waiting to be brought online.
No time like the present.
He crossed to systems monitoring. A socket rested at the center of every facet of the core’s geometric casing. Resting half-inserted into each socket was a fat eight-inch connector. Running from each connector was a wide-gauge length of cabling, connecting directly to one segment of the Promenade.
Triple-checking all settings and conditions, William deemed all things to be optimal. Five years, great risk, and all of his grant money and professional earnings had gone toward this: his moment of truth.
“Make it so.”
He clicked a single key. Masses of black cabling jumping once as electromagnets charged and plugs slammed into sockets. Will’s eyes flicked from the core, down to the diagnostics screen, and back to the core.
A bass thump kicked pleasingly through his ribs as a single distortion wave pulsed off the Promenade. Electricity plugs sparked and burned out. Lightbulbs exploded, dropping the barn into freezing half-light. The generator screamed and black smoke poured from all the wrong places. Will’s eyes scanned information feverishly as it poured down the line, filling pulsing onscreen gauges, numerals skittering as they extended.
The Promenade lit up from within, a solid bar of white light blasting thickly from the airlock, through winter air grown pungent with diesel fumes and burning insulation. Diagnostics informed him that the Promenade had flooded itself, momentarily, with chronon particles. That wasn’t meant to happen. Not yet. He hadn’t yet primed the Promenade for departure.