THE BETTER PART OF VALOR. Morgan Mackinnon
a future he didn’t know. Charles Dickens writing about spirits from a past, present, and future. The idea has been there for a long time, gentleman!”
There was a pause while the translator tried to explain to the General and the Captain what had been said. The General nodded and then said in heavily accented English, “What is this energy source of which you speak? Nuclear power? Atomic energy?”
Dr. Cresta Leigh knew this little trick was one many of the foreign diplomats and visitors used. Pretend to need a translator before admitting to speaking the native language of their hosts.
Sanford frowned slightly. “It’s a mathematical theory that the right unstable element can cause a warp in the time continuum. Einstein admitted the possibility using general relativity although he cautioned against the danger of accidentally creating a process that would send a subject either to the past or present where he, or she, theoretically could not exist. But the idea that we can perhaps use exotic matter to create shortcuts…for instance, technetium is an unstable element and there isn’t any single naturally occurring isotope which is stable. That is what we are pursuing.”
It was obvious the Russians weren’t quite “there” yet. Sanford rushed on. “Just think, gentlemen. If we can master the past or the present, the possibilities.” That sank in, and the table erupted in chatter.
“Gentlemen, please! Please. And my apologies to the fair ladies present who are on my team. I didn’t say we had succeeded—I am saying that we are experimenting. If you would all come with me?”
The lab wasn’t large but quite impressive. Sitting off the conference room, it was obviously designed, not for serious experimentation but for show-and-tell. Standing at the ready was a rotund man in a white lab coat who was introduced as Dr. George Montoya—the team’s chief engineer who supervised his own team of four. Nearby was a young man who looked much too young to even be in such illustrious company, one of Montoya’s engineers, Kurt Kaufmann.
“All right, George, show us what you’ve got.”
Sanford moved to one side so his chief engineer could proceed. Montoya explained the small device on the left was a miniature reactor. No, not the huge things inhabiting the inside of nuclear power plants…just a small one was all he needed for now. It held, he pointed to the inside, a small amount of a very rare element called quanlawtium, which when bombarded carefully with lasers could produce enough energy to move objects to the past or future. Inside a glass display box was a toothpick and a watch.
“As you can see, the watch is set to precisely 1:03 p.m. Please put on these safety glasses. Fine. Now observe as I carefully, carefully apply a small laser to the element. I mean, done incorrectly, I might blow us all out of the room! No, no, just a small joke. Now see the toothpick? This small tubing running from the reactor to the box will warp the time inside the box.”
For an instant, the toothpick did shimmer, vanish, and then reappear. The watch in the box now said 1:02 p.m.
Both George Montoya and James Sanford looked smug and pleased with themselves. As Sanford escorted the company back into the conference room, he beamed. “So you see, gentlemen, we are making progress. We have proven we can move an object back in time by a minute.”
General Klingman had a question. “Ahem. And how long do you theorize it will take until you can move something substantial, say a tank or a plane, to the past and future?”
Sanford blanched. “Oh, no. You’d have to be very careful. Especially moving to the past. Anything you alter in the past can affect the future. Remember Einstein? If you change history in the past, you might cause extreme repercussions in the present or the future. We are working on the theory that this sort of technology may someday give us the ability to analyze the past and look for clues for the future. Just think! We could visit the past and interview great generals or philosophers or painters! Answer questions that no one has answered before. Who was Jack the Ripper? Learn when famines will occur and, if possible, prevent them. Think of all the good we could do for the future!”
Clearly none of the military contingent was impressed nor did they heed what Sanford was saying. As they thanked the team and filed out of the room, you could just see the wheels turning as battles were planned and strategies formulated.
Everyone left with the exception of Rick Berstem, Jim Sanford, and Cresta Leigh. Rick started to take out a cigarette and then stuffed the pack back in his pocket. Damned building and their no smoking rules. He sighed. “You think they bought it?”
Sanford sat down heavily in a chair. He was a tall, well-built man of middle age with longish brown hair and, most of the time, a faraway expression.
“I don’t know. We’re obligated to keep our ‘friends’ up-to-date on what we’re working on to try to avoid sliding back into a cold war, but you can damned bet you if the Russians had something like this, they wouldn’t be telling us about it. We stage these little shows and fulfill our obligations.”
Berstem considered and took in the two with his gaze. “You SOBs have got something, don’t you? I can see it on your faces. Do I even want to know?”
Sanford smiled. “Not yet. Keep the funding coming and you’ll be the first to know.”
Chapter 14
Once their boss exited the conference room, Cresta stuck her head into the outer office. “Stacie? We’re going to the bullpen. If anyone calls or shows up, take a message. If it’s urgent and can’t wait, give us a buzz. Okay?”
With that, the CATE team, along with George Montoya, left the conference room through the tiny display lab and walked into a coat closet. Door shut, lights blinked on overhead, and George Montoya touched a small switch hidden on the side of a wooden panel. Steadily and quietly, the elevator hummed its way down into the bowels of the building, down to what would have been the 25th basement-level floor had anyone been numbering them. When the door opened, they entered a small vestibule containing a monstrous print of the god Cronos eating his young. It was a grotesque painting by Peter Paul Reubens, which the old janitor, Carl Hennessey, had found in a junk shop and hung in the vestibule. Turns out, Hennessey had gotten Cronos mixed up with the Greek Titan named Chronos, who was a personification of time and governed linear chronological time. No one wanted to hurt Carl’s feelings, so they said nothing, and by now, the print seemed to somehow fit.
At a recessed door opposite the elevator was a small box set up on the wall at about five and a half feet. It was an optic scanner that scanned the retina of anyone seeking to enter. If a match was made in the computer, this door slid open and a second door contained a fingerprint scanner. Jim Sanford did the honors on the retinal scan, then on the fingerprint scan. Only the seven primary team members plus George Montoya’s engineers had the ability to open these two doors. The men and woman walked into a small lobby; on the door was the sign CATE PROJECT: CHRONPORTALIZATION AUXILLARY TRANSPLACEMENT EFFECT. Team members used their official identification badges to open this final door.
The CATE project, at least the one the CIA regulars knew about or had heard of, was a new-wave technology theory that experimented with the minor time travel of small objects like toothpicks. The CATE project buried twenty-five floors below the Department of Defense building was something else. They had cracked the secrets to traveling back and forth in time months ago, but no one, not even their boss, Rick Berstem, knew that. What Berstem also did not know was that the team had progressed to the level where they had successfully sent life to the past and then recalled it safely. George Montoya’s pit bull, Boomer, had visited the year 2001 just two months ago. Boomer had a sophisticated year and time stamp attached to his collar; one minute he was drooling all over the lab floor in January of 2002 and two minutes later came back (peeing on the transplacement chamber floor in the process) with December 22, 2001, on the time stamp. Montoya muttered, “Damn dog.”
It was now late March, and in that space of time, there had been three more transplacements attempted. Engineer Danny Convers bravely volunteered to try the past and spent an hour in 1975, documenting said time with not only his time stamp wrist watch but with a photo of a date and time board