Recursion(65)
“If England didn’t go to war with Germany because of something we did, then Alan Turing, the father of the computer and artificial intelligence, wouldn’t have been pushed to break Germany’s ciphering technology. Now, maybe he still would’ve gone on to lay a foundation for the modern, microchip-driven world we live in. Then again, maybe not. Or to a lesser degree. And how many lives have been saved based on all this technology that protects us? More than the lives lost in the Second World War? The ‘what-ifs’ snowball out into infinity.”
Shaw says, “Point taken. These are the types of discussions we need to be having.” He looks at Helena. “This is why I want you here. You aren’t going to stop me from using the chair, but maybe you can help us use it wisely.”
Day 17
They spend the first week hammering out ground rules, among them—
The only people allowed to use the chair are trained agents, such as Timoney and Steve.
The chair can never be used to alter events in the personal histories of the team members, or their friends and families.
The chair can never be used to send agents further back than five days into the past.
The chair’s sole use is for the undoing of unthinkable tragedies and disasters, which can be circumvented easily and anonymously by one agent.
All decisions to use the chair will be put to a vote.
Albert has taken to calling their group the Department of Undoing Particularly Awful Shit, and like many names that start as a bad joke without a quick replacement, the name sticks.
Day 25
A week later, Shaw submits the next mission candidate for the group’s consideration, even bringing in a photograph to make his case.
Twenty-four hours ago, in Lander, Wyoming, an eleven-year-old girl was found murdered in her bedroom, with the MO eerily similar to five previous murders that had occurred over an eight-week period in remote towns across the American west.
The perpetrator had broken into the bedroom at some point between eleven p.m. and four a.m. using a glass cutter. He gagged his victim and violated her while her parents slept unknowing in a room across the hall.
“Unlike previous crimes,” Shaw says, “where the victims weren’t found until days or weeks later, this time he left her in her bed, tucked in under the covers for her parents to find her the next morning. Which means we have a definitive window of time for when the murder occurred, and we also know the precise place. There seems to be little question this monster will do this again. I’d like to propose a vote to use the chair, and I vote yes.”
Timoney and Steve are instant yeses.
Albert asks, “How would you propose Steve dispatch the killer?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a quiet way of doing it, where he intercepts the guy and takes him out into the middle of nowhere and puts him in a hole in the ground where no one will ever find him. And then there’s the noisy way, where the would-be killer is found with his throat slit in the bushes under the very window he was on the verge of climbing through, with the glass cutter and knife still in his possession. With the noisy version, we would be, in effect, announcing the existence of the Department of Undoing Particularly Awful Shit. Maybe we want to make that announcement, maybe we don’t. I’m merely raising the question.”
Helena has been staring at the most disturbing photograph she’s ever seen, and rational thought is disintegrating beneath her. In this moment, all she wants is for the person who did this to suffer.
She says, “My vote is that we take this lab apart and wipe the servers. But if you decide to go through with this—I realize I can’t stop you—then kill this animal and leave him with his incriminating tools under the girl’s window.”
“Why, Helena?” Shaw asks.
“Because if people know that someone, some entity, is behind these reality shifts, then the awareness of your work begins to take on a mythic stature.”
“You mean like Batman?” Albert asks, smirking.
Helena rolls her eyes, says, “If your aim is to repair the evil that men do, maybe it’s in your interest for evil men to fear you. Also, if they find this guy near the scene of the crime, ready to break into a house, authorities will link him to the other murders, and hopefully give closure to the other families.”
Timoney says, “You’re saying we become the bogeyman?”
“If someone chooses not to commit an atrocity because they fear a shadow group with the ability to manipulate memory and time, that’s a mission you’ll never have to face, and false memories you’ll never have to create. So yes. Become the bogeyman.”
Day 24
Steve finds the child murderer at 1:35 a.m. as he’s beginning to cut a hole in the window of Daisy Robinson’s bedroom. He tapes his mouth and wrists and cuts him slowly ear to ear, watching as he writhes and bleeds out in the dirt beside the house.
Day 31
The following week, they decline to intervene in a train derailment in the Texas hill country that kills nine people and injures many more.
Day 54
When a regional jet crashes in the evergreen forest south of Seattle, they again opt not to use the chair, the group reasoning that, as in the case of the derailment, by the time the cause of the accident is determined, too much time will have passed to send Steve or Timoney back.