The heavy metal door swung open on creaking hinges, and Michael took a step away from his lab bench, careful not to jostle any equipment, before turning toward the interloper.
His wife, Abby, stopped at the lab door. She always complained about his unshielded experiments and stood far away. “Michael, still hard at it?”
He started a deep breath, but it burned in his chest, and he suppressed a cough that would only lead Abby to fuss. “I thought you were going to a movie tonight.”
“I did. It’s over. Are you ready to come home?”
He tugged at his worn white coat in irritation. “I can’t. I taught late classes and only started a little while ago. I’m almost ready to run the first test.”
“On your closed time curve? So you can violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?” She slumped against the doorframe. “But your own thesis showed that’s impossible.”
“My thesis presented a Deutschian Closed Time Curve to satisfy the PhD committee. I was forced to assume a particle would emerge in a universe different from the one where it began. Here…” He swept a hand to the bench. “But a particle can skip into the future and return to its own universe. Finally, I have the freedom to study what I want. When I’m not interrupted.”
Abby ignored his hint to leave. “What about tomorrow? It’s our anniversary. You promised.”
Michael’s jaw clenched. There’d be plenty of time for movies and dinners once he’d proven his hypothesis.
Still, Abby knew more about his goals than the ossified old farts who ran the department. Conventional theories allowed traveling backwards along a time curve, so no one objected to studying that paradigm. But his inspiration would allow travel forwards.
His speculative model troubled the review committee, though they hadn’t tried to shut him down. They couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility.
If he was right, it would be the greatest discovery in physics in a century. His name would rival Einstein, Bohr, and Schrödinger. So the university assigned Michael a lab, even as they loaded him with a junior professor’s heavy teaching schedule.
But the muttering against him continued. He had to produce some promising results, and soon.
What was Abby saying? Something about their anniversary? “Yeah, sure.”
He hoped she’d be placated and leave, so he plastered his best charming smile on his face. “We’ll have dinner at that little Mexican place you like.”
“Senior T’s? It closed six months ago.”
The metal door slammed as Abby left. Not an ideal end to the conversation, but at least she was gone.
Michael knew his concept was correct. It was the equipment that remained marginal, hard to calibrate and hard to control.
He dragged his old laptop across the bench, tapped a button, and the racks at the end of the lab hummed to life. As the equipment warmed, he pulled a metallic saucer close and plugged in two short cables.
Maybe he had been working too hard. His eyes felt hot and swollen, and he rubbed them with the heel of one hand and dropped his other to lean on the bench. His vision was blurry when he tapped the keyboard.
A blue flash blinded him.
Pain lanced through his hand.
Michael shrieked and fell backwards as blood sprayed across the bench.
The door burst open and two wide-eyed men tumbled through, lanky foreign exchange students tripping over their own feet.
“Doctor Fischer. What the hell?”
Michael knelt on the floor, cradling his arm. Someone pushed a towel against the gushing wound. More people arrived, and voices surrounded him.
“What set off the alarms?”
“Dammit! Where are his fingers? We should take them with us.”
“I don’t see them. We can’t wait. He’s bleeding.”
Through a woozy fog, his hand throbbed on the ride to the hospital.
***
Darsh added Plexiglas shields around the equipment, moved the laptop across the aisle to a counter under the windows, and secured long cables along the floor with heavy layers of duct tape. He was patient, competent, and exactly the sort of post-doc assistant the department safety officer insisted Michael take on. He had no choice if he wanted to continue his work.
Michael had searched the lab thoroughly and found no trace of his missing fingers. They must have skipped on a time curve. But his thrill faded to frustration. The computer hadn’t been recording, and he couldn’t reproduce the effect.
What he needed was a reflector coated with osmium, even a single atom thick, to improve control.
Darsh was clearing note pads off the experimental bench when…
A blue flash.
Michael leaped backward.
“Darsh, you idiot. Who told you to hit the key?”
“I didn’t touch it, sir.”
Clearly he hadn’t. The laptop lay on the counter behind him, but Darsh wasn’t looking at the computer.
Blood trickled across papers on the bench where something beige had appeared. Two fingers sliced off below the first knuckle.
Michael crept up on the fingers as if they were alive. Maybe they still were. Blood oozed out.
“It worked. My fingers came forward in time. It worked!” Michael roared in triumph.
***
For the second time in a month, Abby raced to the hospital, urging Autocab to drive faster as she read and reread Michael’s message.
Meet me at ER. Don’t fuss. Good emergency.
She was interrogating the admissions clerk when he called to her from across the room.
She ran to him. “Michael. Thank God.”
“I’ve seen the doctor already.” He held up his damaged hand. “The stumps are too far healed for them to reattach my fingers. But the fingers are fresh. Look.”
He held up a plastic bag and Abby’s knees gave out. Michael was helping her to a chair when someone called his name.
A tech in blue scrubs braced the inner door open with one foot as he read from a clipboard. “Doctor Fischer? This way, please. We can run your imaging now.”
That brought Abby fully awake. “What imaging?”
Michael shrugged. “Just following up on an anomaly from my last visit.”
Heat rose through Abby’s cheeks. He hadn’t told her about any problem. There’d been a time when they shared everything, good and bad.
It wasn’t long before he returned. “The doctor will have the results soon, so we can talk to him in a minute. Hospital waiting rooms must be the last place on Earth with paper magazines.” He picked one up idly, avoiding her eyes.
***
Once the doctor said cancer, Abby didn’t remember most of his words. There was advanced and inoperable, and something about trials. The word terminal was in there too.
Michael was eerily calm and asked all the questions Abby’s mind couldn’t form.
“I’m not going to waste the time I have left,” he said on the ride home. Abby nestled against him, still numb. This couldn’t be true.
***
They were sitting at the apartment’s breakfast bar when Michael’s phone beeped a text. His mouth crooked up in a smile as he read.
“Who is it?” Abby asked.
“Darsh. He talked to the Japanese. They can deposit a one-atom thick layer of osmium on a steel substrate.”
His eyes glowed as he held up the phone, wagging it back and forth.
“With this, I still have a chance.” His face hardened with fierce determination.
“Hon, you should be resting.” She stroked his arm. “Have you called the people running that medical trial yet?”
Michael jerked away. “Their statistics are terrible. I’m not going to waste time grasping at straws when I can accomplish real work.”
Abby reached for him, but he was already entering a reply, tapping with the fingers on his good hand.
***
Abby came to the lab as quickly as she could. Michael’s message woke her long before dawn, but she came.
He was working at his usual bench, but balanced on a stool now, too tired to stand. His clothes hung loosely on his withering frame.
Darsh looked up as Abby entered. “Sorry to wake you at this hour. May I get you something? The coffee’s actually fresh. It’s our third pot.”
Abby hadn’t noticed the assistant’s shy smile or his kind, dark eyes before. Michael never worried about her comfort in the lab.
“I’ve done it.” Michael looked up wearily. “I can send something into the future. Anything that will fit in the paraboloid.”
He pointed a truncated finger at a large bowl, shimmering silvery-blue and mounted sideways on a pedestal as if it were a chair. A potted geranium sat in its center.
“I sent this flower two weeks ago and it came through tonight. The petals are still fresh, the soil still damp. I can control the effect.” Triumph wiped the exhaustion from his face for a moment. “I wanted you to see.”
“I’ll arrange for an independent review of the calculations in the morning,” Darsh said. “Let me download a copy.”
“They’re on my tablet. It’s under the window somewhere.” He waved Darsh away to a pile of papers in the corner.
Michael slipped his tablet from his lab coat’s wide pocket and handed it to Abby.
“The password is Abby,” he whispered.
“But, isn’t Darsh looking for this?”
“Hush. Promise me you’ll do exactly as I say.” He waved to a nearby stool. “You’ll sit there. My instructions are in the files.”
Beneath hollow eyes, Michael’s attempt at a charming smile was ghastly. He dragged a wireless keyboard to the edge of the bench and sat in the paraboloid.
“I’m going to see my work published. See my name become famous.”
He kicked off his shoes and lifted his feet into the dish, hugging his shins tight with one arm.
“Behold my magic wand.” Michael reached to the bench and picked up three or four pencils taped together end to end. “I’m counting on you, Abby.”
He poked the keyboard.
A blue flash filled the room.
Darsh shouted. “No, no.”
An after-image of orange blobs crawled in front of Abby’s eyes and, when her vision cleared, Michael was gone.
Darsh activated a monitor under the windows. Lines spanned the display with regularly spaced spikes. “He skipped ahead.”
Abby gawked at the display, gulping helplessly as Darsh brushed the screen with a thumb and finger. The graph zoomed out until a dozen spikes showed. The words tachyon energy ran up the Y-axis and time along the X.
She finally found words. “When will Michael be back?”
The assistant frowned at the screen. “I can’t tell from this file. He used high power. We never tried that before.”
Abby remembered the tablet clutched in her hand. “I have his notes.”
***
They stayed in the lab the rest of the night. Abby tried to amuse herself on her phone while Darsh hunkered over the computers. Dawn brightened the windows and the hall outside began to echo with chatter.
“I must go to the chairman’s office and explain what happened,” Darsh said. “You should go home and get some sleep.”
“What about Michael?”
Darsh adjusted the graph’s scale on the monitor and pointed to the black line across the bottom.
“This is the interval between tachyon events and points where Doctor Fischer’s time curve will intersect our own. A hundred-thirty days, and maybe a few hours. I’ll need help to understand his calculations before I can be sure.”
“A hundred days! He’ll starve.”
“Our time curves have different shapes.” Darsh tapped the screen and a second chart appeared with a red line along the top that plunged in a downward spike.
“This is how Doctor Fischer is experiencing the effect. Here, when we see an instantaneous flash, two hours pass for him. And while we wait one hundred-thirty days, it’s an instant for him.”
Darsh resized the chart. The red line went on forever, diving to the X axis at regular intervals.
Abby’s fingertips prickled and she staggered. Darsh took her elbow to steady her. “This can’t be happening,” she said.
***
One hundred-thirty days later, shortly before midnight, Abby pushed open the lab door. She carried a picture of her new cat. She’d always wanted a cat, but Michael hated them. Well, she wasn’t going to live alone. He’d have to get used to Muffin.
“You sit here.” Darsh guided her to a chair facing the paraboloid dish and handed her a copy of Quantum Physics Today. On the cover, the authors of the featured paper were named in prominent type: Dr. Michael Fischer and Dr. Darsh Patil.
“Something’s different,” Abby said. The paraboloid rested on a box instead of its old pedestal.
“You’re very observant. Doctor Fischer is skipping through time, like a stone across a pond. I can’t influence his vector. But by placing the dish on this unit, I should be able to get a mass reading.” He frowned. “I hope the manifestation lasts long enough to measure.”
Flutters filled Abby’s stomach. “Won’t Michael simply step out of the paraboloid? Be back with us, like his fingertips or the potted geranium?”
“Not until energy injected into the system dissipates.” Darsh rubbed his forehead. “Doctor Fischer and this lab exist in two separate time curves spiraling around each other, overlapping at an angle. Think of it that way. One intersection won’t collapse them into a single reality.”
Abby plopped into her chair with Muffin’s picture and Quantum Physics Today facing the paraboloid. “So that’s why you asked me to bring a picture showing news from home. But, why would Michael appear in the lab at all? We must be a million miles from where he disappeared. Earth’s orbiting the sun and the entire solar system moves through the galaxy.”
“The phenomenon stays within a specified frame of reference.” Darsh’s frown deepened. “I think it’s a gravitational effect. The math department is going through Doctor Fischer’s calculations, but there’s an unbalanced infinity somewhere.”
He dragged a couple flip charts into place beside her, clipping open copies of the physics journal to them.
A computer began beeping.
“Let’s see how well Doctor Fischer predicted the intersection.” Darsh hurried to stand behind Abby and raised his hand to wave.
Flash. Intense blue light and then orange spots danced across Abby’s vision.
“Is that it?” she asked.
Darsh hurried to the computer.
“Within twenty-five nanoseconds. And look at the mass reading.”
“Michael was really there?”
He beamed at her. “Something was there. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“No, it’s not!” Abby jumped up and banged into the flipchart. “You were supposed to keep him safe.”
She kicked the chart over. Fists clenched, she looked down at the scattered pages. “How could he do this to me? Why couldn’t he just die like a normal human being?”
***
Abby sat thoughtfully the next time, seated before more journals propped open on flipcharts while waiting for the flash. Darsh sat next to her and two post-docs hovered over equipment on the bench below the dark windows. The university had assigned more researchers to Michael’s discovery.
“How’s Muffin?” Darsh asked.
“How sweet of you to remember. He’s doing well — runs my life.”
“I’ve always liked cats.”
“What I said last time…” She hung her head. “I wasn’t fair at all. None of this is your fault.”
He blushed. “I never blamed you.”
“Darsh, do you think Michael’s still alive?”
“We can’t be sure.” We meant the gaggle of assistants. Darsh was Principal Investigator now and, in a flurry of excitement, the university gave him all the support he requested.
“We’ve sent chronometers ahead in one week skips. That was successful. Most of the rats survived, too.”
Most? Abby was afraid to ask.
“Can you bring Michael back?”
“I’m sorry, Abby.” Darsh shook his head. “It’s not even theoretically possible.”
The post-docs hunched nervously over their screens.
Darsh straightened in his seat. “Almost time.”
Abby knocked journals off the flipchart and grabbed a nearby pen.
Everything you wanted is here, she scribbled. Come back. Tell us how to get you back.
***
For the first manifestation in the new year, Abby arrived with a turkey sandwich, two brownies, and a bottle of water.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“The energy level of each event seems to be dropping,” Darsh said. “We need more precise equipment, which requires more space and more electrical circuits. The controls are installed in the next room and the staff is monitoring from there.” He pointed to a row of cameras mounted on the wall.
Abby smiled weakly and waved.
“You look tired,” Darsh said. “Are you okay?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.” Abby pulled an instrument cart over to the paraboloid.
“We don’t know if Michael can interact with our reality,” Darsh said as she laid out the food.
“In the tablet, he wrote that he’d be able to see me. And you think he can read these.” She waved at journals displayed on the flipcharts behind her. “Which means you think our photons strike his eyes. That’s an interaction.”
“Not exactly in the way I mean.”
Flash, afterimage.
The food sat untouched on the cart.
“Maybe it was too far away,” Abby said. She picked up the brownies with a sigh.
She handed one to Darsh. “No reason to waste these. I made them myself.”
His smile warmed her, pushing some of the gloom away.
***
The next time, Abby placed a water bottle in the paraboloid, and a sandwich and brownies, laid close against the side so Michael wouldn’t sit on them.
If that made sense.
She added paper and a pen.
Darsh peered over her shoulder. “What’s that?”
She unfolded the sheet reluctantly and showed him.
Please tell me if you’re OK.
“I suppose I’m being silly.”
“Not at all,” Darsh said. “You’re a caring person.”
He pulled a pen from his pocket and added an equation below Abby’s message with question marks below a few terms.
“The last manifestation was more than ten minutes late.” He returned the items to the paraboloid. “We could use his help with these calculations.”
Abby always stared straight to where Michael would be, so the flash left orange afterimages crawling across her vision.
Her tears weren’t only due to the bright light. The sandwich, brownies, and water had disappeared, but there was nothing added to the paper.
***
Darsh had been looking forward to Abby’s visit for days and called out a greeting when she opened the lab door.
“I read that you’re head of the physics lab now,” she said. “Congratulations.”
He flushed, flattered. While never a cutting-edge physicist, it turned out he was a superb administrator.
Abby sat in her chair. “I read an article about a Paly High School class sending time capsules into the future. The kids seemed hyped about it.”
“The university was pleased with the attention that article received,” Darsh said. “Most media lost interest when they realized we’ll never acquire anything that originates on another time curve. But with this new design, we expect, someday, to reliably retrieve what we send forward.”
“But not Michael.”
“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.” His chest tightened. He’d been hoping Abby would stay to talk and if he upset her, she might hurry away.
Sandwiches. Flash. Afterimage. Empty paraboloid.
Darsh led Abby to the window bench and reached a hand into the 3D diagram hovering there.
“Michael’s drift is accelerating. This manifestation was thirty-two percent weaker and two hours later than the last one. The margin of error in our calculations is growing, too.”
“Still can’t do the math?” she asked.
Darsh dropped his gaze apologetically.
Abby gave his arm a comforting squeeze. “Hey, look. Tonight’s sort of an anniversary. Our tenth manifestation. Do you like breakfast burritos? I found a new Mexican place a block off-campus.”
***
Abby and Darsh sat quietly together until well beyond the margin of error, but no blue light flashed.
“Where is he now?” Abby asked as she shoved sandwiches back into a sack.
“I don’t know. We still haven’t gotten the math worked out. But…”
Darsh turned to look her squarely in the face. “The time curves have diverged. You don’t have to come back again.”
“So, he’s gone.” Abby wiped away a lone tear. “It’s been so long, I didn’t think I’d feel anything.”
“I’ll miss your visits,” Darsh said sadly.
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to miss me.”
She bent close and kissed him.
