“Why would you do that?” she asked. “Why would you force yourself to go back in time?”
“I was sending myself a message,” Nick told her. “When I take it, I must know something important. Something I know then, that I don’t know now.”
And finally it fell into place for Caitlin as well. She knew exactly where—and when—he was going. If Nick was right, it would, indeed, change everything.
But if he was wrong…
Edison set the battery in place. Now all that remained was to connect its terminals to the posts on the washboard. Once the machine was engaged, he would ride the elevator down. He could only hope that thanks to his own battery, he’d be impervious to the electricity surging around him—indeed he would be its master, wielding the power like Zeus himself with lightning bolt in hand.
But before he could complete the circuit, Nick and Caitlin appeared out of nowhere. Edison was a man who planned for every contingency, but he had not seen this coming.
“What in blazes are you doing here?” he roared. “I thought Jorgenson had you locked away!”
Up above, the sparks from the asteroid—which was almost overhead now—were becoming longer. Spidery fingers of electricity shot forth from the celestial hunk of copper, longing to be grounded. There were five minutes left before the machine had to be turned on.
“Quick,” Nick said to the girl, completely ignoring Edison, “open the dryer and pull out the globe.”
The boy was going to dismantle the machine? Now? Was he mad?
Nick was anything but mad. He was, however, single-minded. Edison thought Nick had betrayed him. That Nick was working against him. But it didn’t matter what Edison thought anymore—Nick was a man with a mission.
While Nick fumbled with the old telephone, Caitlin opened the door to the “dryer,” and Edison wheeled forward.
“NO!” yelled Edison. “I won’t let you!”
He rose from his chair for the second time that day, grabbed Caitlin, and pulled her away from the machine.
So Nick used his trump card. It was a little underhanded, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“You saw Tesla’s ghost, didn’t you?”
That made Edison freeze. “How do you know that?”
“He wants you to make things right. How are you going to do that, Mr. Edison?”
For a moment, Edison was lost in the question. It gave Caitlin the time she needed to break out of his grip. He reached for her again, but she dodged one way and pulled the other, bumping into the machine, hard. The F.R.E.E.’s many parts rattled, and the sky itself seemed to react with its loud, strobing complaint.
Then, as he grappled, trying to keep her from getting the globe, Edison brushed his hand across the cosmic-string harp. That seemed to stun him.
“Wh…what was that?” Edison said, staring at the harp in astonishment.
He let go of Caitlin and deflated back into his chair.
But before he could say another word, the toaster, which had been teetering during the scuffle, fell from the machine, hit Edison squarely in the head, and knocked him unconscious.
The toaster bounced once on the platform, and then tumbled off before either Nick or Caitlin could catch it. They could only watch it plummet two hundred feet to the ground below, and land in the soft, muddy earth with a thud.
Without the toaster, the F.R.E.E. was useless—and there was no time to go all the way down to retrieve it.
“I’ll get it on my way back,” said Nick.
“From where?” Caitlin asked.
“You mean from when.”
That might have been easy for Nick to comprehend—after all, he had had plenty of time to think about his trip to the past—but Caitlin was still struggling to stretch her mind into four dimensions. She grabbed the globe and placed it down next to the telephone, watching closely as Nick’s hands moved at lightning speed, pulling out wires from both devices, creating the temporary connections.
“As soon as I’m gone,” he said, “you have to disconnect the two devices and put the globe back where it belongs.”
Caitlin nodded, hoping she could remember which wires went where.
Once the two devices were joined, Nick turned the many rings of the phone to the combination he needed. Then he dialed it and pressed the button on the globe.
A swirling spherical vortex appeared before them, terrifying in its depth; an intertwining of light and darkness impossible to fathom. It hovered about two feet off the edge of the platform, whistling as it sucked in wind.
“What if you’re wrong?” Caitlin had to ask as she peered into the abyss, which she felt might, indeed, have been peering into her. “What if you go back, but never make it to the attic? What if the missing part’s not there…because it’s just not there? And jumping into that…that thing…kills you?”
Nick stared into the vortex, hesitating.
Down below, Caitlin saw someone use a grappling hook to climb over the ring. The figure dropped to the ground, then sprinted toward the tower. If Nick was going into the past, he had to do it now.
“Go,” said Caitlin. “Do what you have to do!” It was too late for doubts. This was a very literal leap of faith, and Caitlin found that in spite of those doubts, she had faith in Nick’s decisions. Even the crazy ones.
Nick gave her his best smile, and she knew this could very well be the last time she ever saw it, but she forced herself to give her best smile back.
“See you soon,” he said. And with that, Nick leaped off the platform and into the unchangeable past.
Most theoretical physicists, from Gödel to Feynman to Hawking, admit that under very specific circumstances time travel should, theoretically, be possible. Even Einstein, enraged by the very idea of matter moving through time, ultimately relented in 1935, when he and Nathan Rosen came up with what is now called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, better known as a space-time wormhole.
According to Stephen Hawking—who explained astrophysics to nongeniuses better than anyone—time travel involves a whole lot of things, like virtual particles, and virtual antiparticles, and saddle-shaped space—not that one would sit upon it and ride through time on a faster-than-light cosmic horse—but that space must bend like the sides of a saddle to allow for time travel at all.
Space-time does not bend for just anyone. But it did for Nikola Tesla.
Technically speaking, by jumping into the vortex, Nick ceased to be made of matter, and instead became a sentient sack of antiparticles, which have not only been shown to exist, but have proven to be capable of moving backward in time.
It wasn’t painful, but it was extremely disorienting—even more so than being divided into seven parts and reunited again. He was a shapeless mass of consciousness moving at an impossible speed through four-dimensional space.
It didn’t resemble a wormhole at all. It was more like a hallway. He could sense doors on every side, all leading to places that either didn’t exist, or wouldn’t exist, or flatly refused to exist unless they were gently coaxed into being by some great hand of creation that may or may not itself exist, depending on who you talk to. There was an infinite number of doors, and Nick moved past them too quickly to open any. They pulled at the edges of his curiosity, but he knew that his destination was not beyond the doors around him, but was the door directly in front of him, which now opened.
Then he had the uncanny sensation of a hand being placed firmly on his back and pushing him forward, as if the space-time hallway wanted to be rid of him. It was rude, but perhaps less unpleasant than a cosmic kick in the rear. “And stay out!” he could almost hear space-time say before the portal disappeared, leaving him sprawled on the grass in the middle of a lightning storm, his antiparticle self restored to flesh and bone.
The flashes of lightning made him think for a moment that he had failed, that he was still at Wardenclyffe—but no, because now the night air had an oppressive Floridian humidity that he remembered well.
Had there b
een a lightning storm the night it happened? He couldn’t remember.
The storm was passing. The ground was wet, but the rain had already moved on. He wondered if his passage through time had brought the storm.
Where was he? A lawn. In a neighborhood he didn’t know. It was difficult to pinpoint a specific location when setting the globe. All he knew was that he was somewhere in or near Tampa. The dials on the phone, however, were much more precise. He had arrived exactly thirty minutes before the event that had shattered his life. It was half an hour before the fire.
He ran until he got to the nearest main street. There was a supermarket, a tire store, and a Wendy’s, all closed at two a.m. He saw the street sign: W. HILLSBOROUGH AVE. It was miles from where he lived. He was close, but not close enough! He kept running, but he knew he’d never get there in time, no matter how fast he ran. If only he could drive, but he had no car, or license. He needed a bus, but there were none running at this hour. He thought about waving down one of the few passing cars, but at this time of night and in this part of town, he realized it was not a good idea.
He had to find a reliable means of transportation, so he turned down a residential side street, searching until he spotted a bicycle lying in a side yard. That would do it!
He pedaled for all he was worth, and twenty minutes later—at right about the time the fire would have started—he turned onto his street and saw, five houses down, a home that in his time no longer existed, where a family slept peacefully with no inkling of the terror that was only moments away.
Dropping the bike on his lawn, he hurried around to the back door and found the rock under which his parents always kept the spare key. He could already smell smoke. The fire had started somewhere in the house, but he could see no flames through the windows yet.
He couldn’t warn them, and he couldn’t let them see him. They would awake in their own time, and no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t interfere. Not yet. He would have to wait in the shadows.
Quietly he turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and there standing in his kitchen, looking as astonished as him, was none other than Ms. Evangeline Planck.
Evangeline Planck had left two days before Nick, but she’d arrived at the house only moments earlier.
The space-time wormhole had treated her less pleasantly than it had Nick, with a lot more hair pulling and slapping upside the head. And her nocturnal trip across town had been no walk in the park either, even when she had walked through the park. She’d been forced to debone a suspicious man by using an Accelerati decalcifier, and although she’d missed the lightning storm that accompanied her own arrival, she’d been caught in the downpour of a second short storm, which, this being Florida, she had assumed was natural. She idly mused about her past self, who was at that very moment still undercover as a lunch lady in Colorado Springs, having not yet met Nick Slate. Oh, if she could see herself now!
The front door of the Slate home hadn’t given her any trouble; she entered using an Accelerati universal key, one of their most popular devices.
Then she’d made her way to the kitchen, at the back of the house, unconcerned about waking the family, because she already knew that she would be successful in her lethal mission. This was one of the many advantages of knowing the future.
She’d reached into her pocket and pulled out an Accelerati night-lighter. It looked like an ordinary night-light, but once plugged in, it would send a surge through the wires and start an electrical fire in the walls. She had bent down and plugged the device into an outlet.
It took effect much more quickly than she’d expected. She had smelled the burning insulation within seconds, and smoke began pouring from gaps between the wall and the floorboard. When a flame poked through an air vent, she’d known it was time to go.
She had raced to the kitchen door—which opened abruptly, and there stood Nick Slate, staring at her.
Her first thought was that this was the Nick Slate of the past, perhaps sneaking back home after hours. But then she recalled the second short, unexpected storm. It hadn’t been a natural one after all—it had marked the arrival of another traveler.
“This was never an accident!” Nick said. “It was you!”
“I am not having this conversation!” She pulled out her decalcifier, realizing that she could debone him here, leave him as a shapeless blob to roast in the fire, and never have to deal with Nick Slate again.
But before she could pull the trigger, an air vent exploded overhead, and the entire kitchen seemed to burst into flames at once. The night-lighter had done its job quickly and efficiently; the fire hadn’t started in a single place—every room had burst into flames simultaneously. There were shouts from upstairs.
And even though Evangeline knew that Nick was standing somewhere between her and the door, she couldn’t see him anymore, only flames and billowing black smoke. She’d just have to deal with him later.
She made a dash for the door, but clipped the side of the kitchen table and lost her footing. She fell to the ground, her Accelerati pin falling from her lapel. Here, close to the ground, the air was clearer, and she could see the back door. She scrambled toward it, but someone grabbed her. No, not someone—something.
When she looked back, she saw that her right pant leg had gotten snagged on a doorstop poking out of the baseboard behind the kitchen door. She tugged, but the spider silk was strong and durable—one of its best qualities. It wouldn’t tear. Now she could hear the family upstairs shouting instructions to one another. Finally she pulled herself free—just as the ceiling above her caved in.
Nick didn’t have time to deal with Ms. Planck any more than she had time to deal with him. They both had missions here. It was clear that she had started the fire. But that didn’t change anything. Except his perspective on it.
The fire was happening. His house would burn down. There was no question of that.
But there’d been someone behind his mother that night.
As the kitchen filled with flames and smoke, Nick dove through the doorway to the living room, dropping to the floor for clearer air. He coughed and tried shallow breathing. Déjà vu threatened to overwhelm him just as surely as the flames. He heard his mother scream something. He heard his father desperately calling for Nick and Danny. He heard them all bounding down the stairs. His father led the way, making sure the path was clear of burning debris. His mother brought up the rear.
“Keep going, Nick!” his mom said. “Don’t stop!”
Those were the last words he’d ever heard her say. Nick pushed himself up from the floor. He could see them now. He could see her! His eyes hurt, his lungs hurt, but there she was, only a few feet away. He saw his past self glance back at his mom, as if to confirm she was right behind him in the billowing smoke.
He remembered doing that. And even as he took an involuntary step deeper into the shadows and billowing smoke to avoid being seen, Nick knew he had been seen, barely, by his past self—but his past self didn’t know what he was seeing
Then an explosion blew the front door off its hinges. Nick saw his younger self, certain beyond measure that his mother was right behind him, jump through the opening.
Then, from this new perspective, Nick saw a burning beam drop toward the doorway, and time seemed to slow down.
Nick hurled himself forward and grabbed his mom’s arm. She yelled as he held her back and the heavy, flaming timber narrowly missed her.
His mother turned then and saw him. The terror in her eyes blended with confusion.
“Nick? But—how—”
“This way,” he said, gently pulling his mother away from the inferno. “We can’t get to the front door; we have to go out the back.”
She looked through the doorway then, and he did too, just in time to see Wayne Slate come racing back toward the house to save his wife, but the porch roof came crashing down before he got there, and the living room windows exploded.
His mother grabbed Nick and held him clos
e to shield him from the worst of it. He could feel his shoes melting.
“The back door!” Nick told her. “Hurry!” This time he didn’t let her bring up the rear. He made sure that she went first.
Everything in the kitchen was on fire: the table, the walls, the cabinets. He could see that part of the ceiling had caved in—and there, wedged beneath the fallen timbers, was Ms. Planck.
“Nick! Help me!” she begged. “Please help me!”
And he tried. In spite of everything, he tried.
He turned to his mom, pointed at the kitchen door, and shouted, “Go!”
Then he went to Ms. Planck. He grabbed her arm and pulled, but it was no use. The flames grew stronger, louder in his ears. He felt seconds away from bursting into flames himself—but how could he just let her die there?
That’s when his mother made the choice for him, grabbing him and pulling him out the door.
He looked back just as they cleared the doorframe. That was his final image of Evangeline Planck, lunch lady, Grand Acceleratus: with desperation and fear in her eyes as the rest of the ceiling came down upon her. And in that moment, Nick realized something.
A body had been found in the house, and still would be—but it had always belonged to Ms. Planck, not his mother. Everyone, even the coroner, would assume it was Mrs. Slate.
Perspective now proved otherwise.
Outside in the backyard, both Nick and his mom gasped and coughed, filling their lungs with good air, forcing out the bad. She started to go around the side of the house to get to the front yard, but the fire made that way impassable.
“We have to get to your father and Danny,” she said. “They must think we’re still in the house.”
Nick realized there was nothing he could say at that moment that would stop her, so he led her to a thin spot in their backyard hedge. “This way,” he told her. “It’s how I go when I want to sneak out without being seen.”
“Nicky!” she said, a little bit chiding, and a little bit surprised, but said no more. They pushed through the hedge into their neighbor’s yard, then went around the side of that house. By now, all the neighbors had come out to gawk. The wail of approaching fire engines grew louder. Wayne was out on the front lawn screaming, his eyes cast heavenward, as if the world was ending—and for him, in this moment, it was.