Lost in Time(94)

Sam stared at the box. “Impossible.”

“It’s real, Sam. After all these years, we’ve finally done it. What we always meant to. But it’s more than that—”

Nora cut him off. “It’s Pandora’s box, is what it is.”

Elliott shook his head. “What do you mean? This is the future. The biggest discovery in human history.”

“No, Elliott, this could be the end of human history.”

Elliott exhaled. “That’s absurd.”

Nora pointed at the box. “Think about it. What if this is the reason for the Fermi Paradox? Why are we alone in the universe? What if this is the reason?”

Sam glanced between the two of them. “I don’t follow.”

“What if,” Nora said, hands held out, “every sufficiently advanced civilization ends shortly after this discovery? That’s what’s going to happen if we use this machine to send something to the past that doesn’t belong there. A causality failure. In an instant, our universe ceases to exist. Is the risk worth it? Of course not. We should destroy it. And never tell anyone it’s even possible.”

“We’re not going to destroy it,” Elliott said. “And besides, we still have work to do.”

“What work?” Adeline asked.

“We have two issues,” Elliott replied. “Location and time. We’ve been working on it, but we can’t get the payloads to arrive exactly where and when we want.”

“And power,” Hiro added. “Transmissions still require a massive amount of power. It’s not financially feasible for shipping.”

To Adeline, Elliott said, “I take it you’re in favor of continuing development?”

“I am.”

“This is insane,” Sam said. “I agree with Nora—this is too dangerous to mess around with.”

The dissent from a close friend seemed to put Elliott on the defense. He spoke slowly now, as if fighting to maintain his composure. “This is the key to the past—”

“The past cannot be changed,” Nora said.

“I accept that,” Elliott shot back. “The question is: have we already done it?”

“How would we know?” Nora asked.

“We could search historical photos,” Sam said. “For ourselves. And maybe other Absolom staff.”

Adeline turned to him, and a thought occurred to her: she had only used Tesseract to search for herself. And she had found herself. What if the others had also traveled to the past?

Nora locked eyes with Constance. “What do you think?”

Constance glanced around at the others. “I share Sam and Nora’s reservations. This is dangerous. It’s already gone too far. We should end it here and now. Let’s destroy it before we leave tonight.”

Elliott held his hands out and took a deep breath.

“I know you’re all concerned. And perhaps a little in shock. Let’s take some time to consider—”

Nora laughed. “Of the things we have, Elliott, time is clearly not one.”

*

Adeline drove straight home. Because that’s what she knew she had done. What she didn’t know was what to do next.

Nora was going to die in a few hours. The moment she had waited almost twenty years for was here—and Adeline still didn’t know who was going to kill her.

A text message appeared on her phone. It was from Nora:

Did you know?

What?

What E and H were working on?

Yes.

You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets lately.

Adeline sensed that she had one chance to understand what was about to happen. She had to seize it.

Can I come over?

No. Don’t even try. I’ll call the police if you do.

Adeline paced, trying to figure out what was happening.

She had to figure out who had killed Nora in order to clear her father’s name. But it was more than that. A killer was about to go free, a killer who might kill again—her or someone else.

On her phone, Adeline pulled up the Absolom City camera feeds. Her father and her younger self were trudging along the sidewalk, on their way to Nora’s house. On the porch, they rang the doorbell and waited until the front door swung open, and they disappeared inside for approximately thirty-seven minutes.

She opened the feed for the cameras in the crawl space and attic of Nora’s home. In the green tint of night vision, she saw that there was no one there.

Adeline remembered what was happening inside. Her father and Nora were telling her that they had been seeing each other. Adeline had felt betrayed that night—for herself and her mother. Rage had overtaken her. They had argued, voices rising until Adeline had shouted, “How could you tell me on the anniversary of Mom’s death?! What’s wrong with you?! Both of you!”

On the phone, in the video feed, the front door flew open, and young Adeline stormed out into the night, tears streaming down her face.

Adeline switched to the feed of the crawl space and the attic. There was still no one there.

From her memory, Adeline knew she hadn’t killed Nora. Her father hadn’t either.

As she stared at the feeds, she knew that left only one possibility.

Absolom Two.

A way to travel to the past.

There was one issue: that technology had yet to be perfected. As Elliott had said that night, he and Hiro hadn’t figured out how to send something to an exact time and place.