All Our Wrong Todays(32)
My father embedded several technical safeguards into the time-travel apparatus to ensure an automatic return to the exact point in space and time from which I was flung—what the chrononauts call the “boomerang protocol” because . . . actually I don’t know why. Maybe it just sounds cool. The safeguards should cause me to rematerialize in my father’s lab one minute after I left. I mean, assuming the Goettreider Engine doesn’t malfunction when it’s turned on, maybe because I accidentally corrupted its wonkily calibrated inner workings with whatever unpredictable energy glommed onto me during my space-time travels, and vaporize half the continent, including the parcel of Toronto real estate on which my father’s lab will be built.
So, I guess I should at least wait to see what happens when Lionel flips the switch before boomeranging back to a future that may not be there.
52
Lionel seems hyperaware that the mood in the room is shifting from curiosity to impatience. Someone asks Jerome how long this is going to take and he shrugs, hammy, smirking, enjoying the ozone tang of looming failure.
I expected to witness a momentous fault line in human discovery, dense with portent and grandeur, but it’s scuffed up with careless infidelity and lame office politics and clammy sweat beading on the forehead that houses history’s greatest mind.
“It’s fine,” Lionel says. “The readings aren’t at significant enough levels to affect the experiment.”
What Lionel doesn’t realize is he just discovered tau radiation—the very trail I followed back in time, the unique energy signature of the Goettreider Engine itself, wisping through my molecules and paradoxically announcing its presence minutes before it would first be introduced to the world. So, yeah, huge screw-up on my part.
Ursula hesitates but takes her seat. It’s unclear if it’s the radiation readings troubling her or the rigid, marauding fury in her husband’s eyes as she sits next to him. Lionel faces the assembled observers and offers a tight smile.
“Thank you for attending what I hope will be an illuminating display,” Lionel says. “I believe Mr. Francoeur has explained the essential nature of my work to you all and you’ve already been patient watching me fiddle with the equipment, so I’ll just say that if, and I realize it’s a substantial if, but if my theory holds and the constant rotation of the planet can be harnessed to produce an efficient and robust energy source, it could be of great value to our technical endeavors. Of course, I don’t expect much of today’s experiment. But it should at least indicate that there’s something to my theories worthy of further pursuit.”
There is no record of what Goettreider said before switching on the prototype. He wrote no notes, spoke off the cuff. The gist of it was conveyed by the various witnesses in the subsequent weeks, before they all died, but they were scientists and none paid his words much mind before the device was turned on and stunned them all with what it unleashed. In the decades that followed, thousands of writers have taken a crack at imagining this speech, imbuing it with pomp and prophecy, politics and philosophy. Scholars have dissected its possibilities. Poets have made it vast and uncanny.
And I just heard it, his actual statement, cautious and modest with an undercurrent of self-regard. It’s always been a subject of intense argument whether or not Goettreider suspected what he was about to achieve—but as I stand here, hearing his words, seeing the way he carries himself, he clearly had lofty ambitions but grounded expectations. He looks like a guy mostly hoping to avoid public humiliation.
Ursula gives Lionel a sweet nod of encouragement and he stands up straighter. His eyes survey the console to ensure everything is as it should be. He takes a deep breath, playfully cocks an eyebrow at the observers, and pulls up the activation lever to turn on the Goettreider Engine.
53
I’m still tucked in the nook behind the observers, so I have about thirty seconds before the Engine begins its operation cycle to reposition myself if I want to see the faces of the assembled witnesses and catch their celebrated reactions.
There’s a tickle in the back of my mind that tells me I’m safe where I am, even if I don’t have the best view of the experiment and its observers, the best way to ensure I have no material interaction with the unfolding events is to stay put. Unfortunately, reason is no match for vanity and wonder.
As the device gears up and the absorption coils start to crackle, I slip out of the nook and position myself on the other side of the room from where Lionel stands with his hand still on the activation lever, so I have a clear view of the observers. Everyone has a similar expression, vaguely interested, vaguely unimpressed. Except Ursula, her face knit with apprehension, jaw muscles flexing as she grinds her teeth.
The Engine gets up to speed and emits a rumble that makes my internal organs wobble gelatinously. Loose objects like the coffee mug I bumped jiggle in place. A few observers flash nervous half smiles, but everyone’s definitely paying attention now. Lionel stares at his invention, his hand on the lever, ready to switch it off if things take a wrong turn, but fascinated by what might happen next.
What happens next is a glittering, radiant plume leaps from the absorption coils and pitches across the lab, enveloping the observers in a silvery whorl of light.
A few people scream. A few raise their hands to protect themselves. The rest just stare in mute shock. Ursula laughs, bright, delighted. The plume doesn’t hurt them, although everyone’s hair rises in the air like the strands have lost their tether to gravity.