Lost in Time(21)

Adeline shrugged.

“Strong gravity slows time,” Sam explained. “In fact, for my right hand, time would pass at half the rate of my left. If you had a time-lapse camera and watched these hands for years, you would see my left begin to wrinkle and discolor while my right barely aged. That is gravity’s effect on time. But our breakthrough was about the third piece of the puzzle: energy.”

Sam let his hands drop. “Did you know that according to general relativity, any form of energy is a source of gravity?”

“Of course I didn’t know that, Dad.”

Sam laughed. “Relativity proved that gravity and energy are essentially manifestations of the same thing. In particular, both distort the curvature of space-time. Our breakthrough is that we could use increasingly large amounts of energy to modify gravity and distort space-time, essentially causing a specific object to be displaced in space and time.”

“You’re losing me, Dad.”

“The point is that we, much to our surprise, were indeed able to create a machine that could transport items from one location to another, just as Dani had theorized.”

“So Absolom did work?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the payloads Absolom transported did arrive at their destination—we used quantum entanglement as a form of tracking. The problem was that the packages weren’t actually there, despite the quantum tracking confirmation.”

“They were in the past,” Adeline said.

“That’s right—that was our second discovery about time. If we used energy and gravity to displace an object in space, it was also displaced in time. It was sent into the past. But the worst part was the final realization: that the act of transporting something with Absolom essentially branched our universe—it created an alternate timeline where the payload was deposited. This is consistent with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is the idea that we are constantly creating copies of our universe, even as we speak.”

Sam laughed. “Frankly, I thought we were finished. We’d spent billions to build a machine that was no use for anything I could imagine—I mean, what good is sending items to the past in an alternate universe?”

Sam paused. “But Dani saw what none of the rest of us could: she saw the potential to use Absolom for prisons, to exile the worst of humanity and make the world a better place. That day, she destroyed the original business plan, and all documents related to shipping. Everyone at the company was under an NDA, and it was a very secretive place to work. Actually, very few even knew what we were working on in the first place—at least, what it was supposed to be used for. I think half the staff probably thought it was a new form of energy generation, a replacement to nuclear power. Some thought it was a new weapon.”

“So Dani sold it to the world?”

“She did. It all happened so fast. Absolom Sciences transformed from a secretive start-up to this purpose-built city in the desert that changed the world.”

Sam stared at his hands. “And along the way, we lost your mother anyway. In a strange twist of fate, we had accomplished the very thing none of us believed in—using Absolom to better the world and make a fortune—and all of us from the original five had lost the reason we were doing it. For me, your mother. For Elliott, his son. For Constance, her health. For Nora, her parents—they never really recovered from their financial advisor and friend’s betrayal. Nora moved them to the nicest facility in the area, but their health declined. She thought it was maybe them feeling like they had lost the last bit of control and independence they had in the world. Losing your life savings has a way of doing that to you.”

“And Hiro?”

“He’s still fighting his demon. And he’s always in financial trouble.”

“One thing I don’t get, Dad. How is all that related to Nora’s death?”

“Because I think it’s all happening again.”

“What’s happening again?”

“The night Nora was killed, Elliott gathered us in the lab and showed us a new prototype he’d been working on, Absolom Two. He’d made another breakthrough.”

“What kind of breakthrough?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Adeline squinted at her father. “Why?”

“You’re smart enough to know why.”

“Because you think if I knew, I’d be in danger.”

“Exactly.”

“You think that’s why someone killed Nora.”

“I think that’s half the reason she was killed. That night in the lab, after Elliott showed us his experiment, Nora insisted he destroy the machine. She felt it was too big of a risk.”

“What did everyone else say?” Adeline asked.

“I agreed with Nora. Hiro had been working with Elliott on the Absolom Two. He was for it. Constance agreed with Nora and me. She was against it.”

“And Daniele?”

“Dani was as insistent as Nora. Except she wanted the opposite. She wanted to continue Elliott’s work, and to finish it, regardless of the risks.”





SIXTEEN


That night, when Adeline returned to Daniele’s home, the older woman was sitting at the kitchen island waiting for her.