Time Travel 02 Nothing but Time Read online

  Acknowledgements

  For my wonderful husband who claims that, beyond the magic and mystery of the romance, some things simply can’t just happen. There must be a plausible, scientific reason. For him, I give you a story with a plausible, scientific reason. Theoretical… but plausible.

  If it’s not plausible enough, then the magic is always there.

  Chapter One

  ISIS Science & Technologies Facility

  South of Oxford, England

  January 2012

  “David, I don’t think that we’re supposed to be in here.”

  “Nonsense, Kate, it’s my lab. I can come in here whenever I want to.”

  “Let me rephrase then, I don’t think I’m supposed to be in here,” Kate Kallastad returned as her date continued to pull her along by the hand, pausing only to swipe his facility I.D. card through the wall-mounted scanner prompting yet another door in the restricted section of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to slide open with a beep of welcome. “I don’t have the clearance for this sector and you know it.”

  The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, or RAL as it was called, was a research facility funding projects in everything from nanotechnology to orthopedic implants. It was probably fair to say that half of the facility had no idea what the other half was up to. Most certainly, in many cases, they weren’t authorized to know. Some projects under government funding were simply classified as outside of one’s pay-grade. Dr. David Fergusson, Kate’s date for the night, worked in a high security, quantum physics division of the RAL’s ISIS lab in Oxfordshire. That was all she knew and Kate was completely comfortable with that, having been lectured thoroughly on the rules of the lab when she’d begun her job at ISIS just six months before.

  Her work was in another, less secure sector in biomedical chemistry with a team currently working on cures for any number of viruses including meningitis. While her team’s project was well funded by WHO, the World Health Organization, Kate knew the dollar value of hers was no match for David’s, even though she had no idea what he did.

  The nature of his work was deeply classified and this field trip into his lab went way beyond typical first date confidences. These were the ‘so where are you from?’ moments in dating not the ‘I have a major revelation for you’ ones.

  Kate hadn’t been in England for long. She was an American newly hooded with her Master’s degree in biochemistry from MIT and just starting her first big job. She was focused on her career and success, for herself, her team and their project. Because of that focus, she knew almost no one in England beyond the few friends she had made at work and David, who she had met about four months before while having lunch with a couple of mutual associates. He had expressed an interest in Kate right away but she had put him off, citing her new job and responsibilities. However, he’d been persistent, repeatedly asking her out. Her new co-workers and friends had added their voice. They all agreed Kate needed to get out and get a life outside the lab and her studies.

  They wore her down and, eventually, Kate had agreed. What would it hurt anyway? Dr. Fergusson was perhaps eight to ten years her senior but pleasantly handsome in a lean, British fashion. With his wavy blond hair and crisp accent, he was attractive in that English way that appealed to a large majority of American women.

  To her surprise, the date hadn’t been too bad. They had a nice dinner at a curry house – an Indian restaurant – on the London Road in Oxford where Kate had found a nice flat to rent not far from Oxford’s campus where she spent her free hours doing research toward her PhD. David had been a perfect gentleman if a bit over eager to impress. He had droned on and on about his achievements and awards until Kate had finally asked him what other things he liked to do. That led to a more moderately interesting introduction to polo, a sport Kate knew little of but found interesting. After all, if it was good enough for royalty, how bad could it be?

  Things had been going along pretty well until halfway through dinner David had insisted she come take a look at his ‘breakthrough’. All Kate could think about was – if David had had a breakthrough – she was the last one who should be getting the first peek. There were reasons the RAL had rules…and I.D. scanners. It was to keep people who weren’t authorized out. Like Kate. “Really, David. Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, no!” he insisted, still pulling her along behind him, his hand tight about hers. “It’s just through here and it’s so thrilling. You must see it!”

  “David, I don’t even know what you’re working on,” she reminded, “and I’m sure I’m not supposed to. Won’t you get in trouble for showing me?”

  “They needn’t know. It’ll be our secret. I wanted you to be the first to see it, Kate. I’ve been looking forward to this moment and the timing is just perfect, don’t you agree?” He shot her a smile as he swiped his card yet again at a door with his name on a plaque next to it. David’s lab was a tidy space, large and open, all gleaming white walls and stainless steel. Everything had a place and it was all where it was supposed to be. Clearly, he leaned toward the anal side of cleanliness, Kate thought as she tentatively looked around the lab. His words about sharing the moment with her had given Kate a bit of an unpleasant chill and, for the most part, she just wanted to go home.

  However, David grabbed her hand once more and pulled her into the lab. The center of the room was dominated by an enclosed space of walled in steel that, to Kate, gave the impression of an air-lock or space ship fuselage. A room within the room.

  The door had a locking mechanism similar to one aboard a submarine or on a bank vault. It was standing open and that was where David was towing her.

  Realizing his intention, Kate stopped mulishly in her tracks pulling him back with both hands. “No, David, I don’t like this.”

  “Fine,” he relented, a frown marring his normally handsome face with childish petulance. “Let me tell you about it first then. Are you familiar with wormholes?”

  “Sure. Physics 101.” Kate shrugged, beginning to think that David worked more in science fiction than straight science. “A bridge through space-time. The Einstein-Rosen bridge first dreamed up back in the 1930s proposing that space and time were not flat but in folds and that, rather than travelling around it, you could sort of go through the middle of the folds thereby getting across space faster. But, David, that’s just science fiction. Theory. It’s not real.”

  “Au contraire, my dear,” David returned with a smirk of superiority and a hint of condescension in his English tones. “Scientists have been working on this idea for generations. We know that it is possible; we just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. But, Kate, I figured it out! I found the key! I’m going to be famous! Look!”

  David pointed into the chamber where a device that looked suspiciously like a nuclear bomb sat on the floor. About three feet long, it was shiny steel, largely tubular with four rubber-tipped legs that kept it stable. It reminded Kate of one of her grandpa’s cigar tubes…only much bigger and infinitely more menacing.

  On either side of the tube, large metal panels stood upright like sentinels on guard. From the ends of the tube, thick wires snaked across the floor before connecting to the panels. Other cables led to a laptop that was sitting on a nearby table. David was already typing something into it as he began his lecture. “Like hundreds of physicists around the world, my sector has been funded for years to develop a viable wormhole technology.” He waved his fingers as if a magician revealing the mystical powers of the universe. “The creation of a trans-space teleportation device that will allow us to transport matter from one location to another. We always knew that they randomly appear, but initiating one, controlling the destination has always been th
e key.”

  “And that’s it?” Kate raised a skeptical brow at the malevolent-looking piece of machinery. While it looked capable of mass destruction, it certainly didn’t appear to be a breakthrough in space travel.

  “It’s not just an ‘it’, Kate. It’s a quantum zero-point energy siphon. The siphon pulls zero-point energy directly from the raw underlying power of the universe at a sub-quantum level. With it connected just so, a quantum vacuum is created opening a stable wormhole between the two plates.”

  “And it works?” she asked.

  “Of course it does. I transported an office chair over there today,” he answered absently, jerking a thumb back towards the door.

  Kate turned to see a generic swivel chair sitting near a desk. “Are you sure that that chair wasn’t already there? You have a half dozen of that same chair in here.” ISIS purchased the generic chair in bulk; she had several of the same in her lab as well.

  “Well.” David frowned then before admitting, “I’m not absolutely certain that it was the same chair. I don’t remember it being there before, but the one I had in here definitely disappeared. Isn’t that great? I transported a solid object through space!”

  “Doesn’t help if you don’t know where it went,” Kate told him wryly, crossing her arms over her chest. While Kate knew that she was being rude in the face of David’s enthusiasm, it all felt so very wrong. She had a very bad feeling gnawing in the pit of her stomach.

  “You don’t understand!”

  “Maybe not, but what I do understand is that I shouldn’t be here and that you shouldn’t be telling me all this,” Kate insisted. She didn’t want to lose her job over this. She’d worked to long and too hard for it. Getting caught in this lab might be enough to see her sacked. “It’s time you took me home.”

  “No!” He stomped his foot. “If you’ll just let me show you!”

  “I don’t want to see it, David!” she repeated. “I don’t have the clearance for this.”

  “Look! Look!” He pushed another chair between the two plates and raced back to the laptop, punching in one last command. “I’ll send it over to Dr. Raney’s office,” he announced as he hit the ‘Enter’ key with definitive pleasure. The machine did nothing. It emitted no sound, no light, no lasers. However, after a moment a black spot appeared between to the two metal plates. It was so small that she almost hadn’t noticed it until the area around the opening began to refract in the light and then visibly bend, startling Kate.

  “Well, that’s different,” she murmured under her breath in astonishment as the vortex expanded and began to emit a wind-blown sound. A dull, train-like roar that, in her experience, usually preceded a tornado. It wasn’t loud at all. Kate thought it was rather like being down in the cellar when the tornado hit. “Why is it windy?”

  “That’s not wind at all,” David told her. “Merely the gravitational pull against the room. You see, it’s not blowing so much as sucking…”

  A pen on the table flew through the air before snapping into the vortex.

  “Geez, David! We shouldn’t be in here with that thing on! Who knows what it could do!” Kate turned intending to flee the room, not wanting to be there when the storm hit. She needed to get out and shut the door with or without David but just as she reached the portal, David cried out.

  “Aha! Look!”

  Just as she turned, Kate watched the chair stretch and elongate then disappear with an audible pop. Astonished, Kate’s jaw sagged. Well, who would have really thought it would work? She certainly hadn’t.

  An undeniable suction filled the room. Kate clung to the doorframe as David’s sport jacket began to pull away from him. He stumbled away from the table only to struggle to return to it. “Okay, David, turn it off!” she yelled. “You’ve proven your point! Turn it OFF!”

  Looking worried for the first time, David caught the edge of the table and pulled himself back toward laptop that had also began to buck and wobble across the table toward the vortex that had widened to encompass the entire area between the panels.

  “Hurry, David!” Kate tried to pull herself the rest of the way out the door but her strength was no match for the pull created by the eddy.

  “I’m trying, Kate,” he complained tightly as he typed into the machine. “It won’t shut down.”

  “Damn it, David, just pull the…David!” Kate screamed as David stumbled away from the table. He tried to throw himself back toward the machine but was pulled toward the siphon instead. His body elongated in a surreal fashion as the storm pulled him inside as if he were a cartoon character being stretched like a rubber band. His yell of surprise echoed her own then, with a pop, David was gone. Another pop sounded right on top of the first as the siphon was ripped from its cables and disappeared. The laptop was dragged off the table as its cable was swallowed by the wormhole until it was gone was well leaving behind the table which was safely bolted to the floor.

  As if satisfied by its meal, the forceful drag began to abate but Kate’s grip on the doorframe wasn’t enough to defy the lingering pull. Her hands slipped and her feet slid across the floor.

  So this is what it’s like to be a deer in the headlights, she thought as it pulled her in, all her fight diminished by fascination as she stared into the whirl of colors formed against the steel wall beyond like churning thunderclouds at dawn. Grays and whites and silvers all swirling together like some monochromatic frappuccino.

  Caught. Fascinated. She couldn’t look away.

  Chapter Two

  “Ahh, right on time!” David’s voice cut through the dizzying nausea that had Kate scrunching her eyes tightly together as she lay curled in a fetal position on the ground clenching her stomach. “Just breathe! The nausea will abate,” he advised in a cheery voice.

  Having no choice but to take his advice, Kate inhaled deeply noting that the air was cool and fresh, a balm to her whirling dizziness. Encouraged, she tried it again. “David?” Kate moaned still squeezing her eyes to block out what seemed to be a very bright light. “What was that? I feel as if I’ve been put on the rack!”

  “That’s the effects of spaghettification, Kate,” he said cheerfully. “Fascinating isn’t it? Your body was stretched to be thin enough to move through a microscopic singularity.”

  “Microscopic singularity?” she repeated mindlessly. What was he talking about? Kate clenched her fists against the pain and nausea surprised to feel grass beneath her palms. “This isn’t Dr. Raney’s office, is it? Oh, God, where did you send us?”

  “Oh, we’re still right here in Didcot,” he answered referring to the location of the ISIS campus twenty-four kilometers south of Oxford.

  Feeling the cool, dampness of earth and grass beneath her cheek, Kate cracked her eyes. “Did you send us outside?”

  “Well, not exactly,” he hedged a bit and even through the nausea and confusion, Kate could hear the awful hesitation in his voice.

  “What do you mean ‘not exactly’, David?” Dread tightened in her core as she clenched her teeth. Whether they were clenched in irritation or to keep her dinner where it was, Kate wasn’t sure.

  “There seems to have been a little mix up with the device. We are exactly where we left from. Exactly,” he reiterated.

  “What do you mean ‘exactly’?” Drawing a deep breath, Kate rolled onto her back before pushing herself into a sitting position. Opening her eyes, she found, not the bright fluorescence of office lights that had burned at her closed lids, but rather dim twilight darkening the rosy horizon to the west. A quick glance around proved that she wasn’t in the lab or in anything more impressive than the middle of a pasture. There were actually cows grazing nearby! In addition, an old-fashioned, black carriage stood nearby complete with a horse to pull it. It looked suspiciously like one she’d seen in Robert Downey Jr.’s new Sherlock Holmes movie just a few weeks before; however, it didn’t seem to be a prop.

  Dread washed over her, an ugly foreboding that she wished she were coward enough to just clos
e her eyes against and deny. Instead, she faced the inevitable. “What did you do, David?”

  “Here’s the thing, Kate,” he began in a gentle tone that Kate equated to using with startled horses, abused dogs and lunatics. “You are in exactly the same place that you were five minutes ago, the problem is that you’re not in the same time.”

  “Not in the same time,” she repeated dumbly as if the words had no meaning. “Not in the same time?”

  David squatted before her taking her hand in his and gently patting it. “It seems that my device didn’t necessarily travel through space itself as it did through space-time. The zero-point energy siphon drew more power than I had calculated and created a run-away quantum vacuum between the plates. This, in turn, created a microscopic singularity spinning at near light speed that manifested itself as a wormhole – which I expected, of course – bridging two points in time and space rather than space alone. Though I had anticipated that any object set between the plates would be sent through, the gravitational pull of the microscopic singularity grew when it wasn’t immediately shut down. It drew me in and, I gather, even ripped the siphon from its cables. I had hoped that the singularity would immediately evaporate after that, but since I could not be certain, I knew I had to wait for you to get here, just in case.”

  Kate lay stunned on the grass trying to absorb the nonsense David had just spouted. “In English, please.”

  “A time machine, Kate. I’ve created a time machine! Isn’t it wonderful? Can you imagine the awards I’ll get for this? Maybe even the Nobel Prize in Physics next year!”

  “What?” Kate questioned, locked still on the statement that came before all of his self-glorifying ramblings. “What do you mean ‘not in the same time’, David? A time machine?”

  “We’ve traveled through time, Kate!” He beamed at her. “Isn’t that exciting?”

  “David, if you don’t shut it and explain to me exactly what happened right this instant, I swear to you I will make a woman out of you!” she snarled. “Now talk!”