Deceive the Paradox

DECEIVE

  THE PARADOX

  A novella

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2015 by Michael D. Britton

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ammon Waters climbed out of his black 2017 Smart Car and locked it with his remote. He adjusted his earpiece and kept talking as he looked both ways to cross the busy lunchtime thoroughfare of State Street in Salt Lake City.

  “Jim, I’m really serious,” he said, checking his watch. “I’ve truly had a breakthrough this time.”

  “You’ve traveled?”

  “No, no – it’s not quite ready for that, yet. There’s one more heavy equation I need to work out, but the rest of the bones of the chronoporter are there – it’s all in place from an energy standpoint. I just need to put the meat on the bones and discover the way to actually control and pinpoint the temporal destination algorithm.”

  Ammon checked his watch again. He didn’t want to be late for this lunch appointment. He was meeting the two most important people in his life.

  His two women.

  Emma, the love his life, and mother of their child. They’d met and married twenty-three years ago, back in 1999. And in 2001, along came Esther – the third member of this lunch party.

  Esther had just returned from a mission for the Church. Eighteen months of teaching and preaching and serving in far-off South Korea. They’d had a great homecoming dinner on Sunday – but there were too many people there to really get a good chance to talk. Today’s lunch was the first chance in a long time for them to sit down as a family and just chat.

  Today Emma would be walking over from her assignment at the Church Office Building, and Esther was driving up from Holladay where she had spent the morning with her boyfriend, who had just returned from a mission himself last month.

  “Look, Jim, I gotta go – having lunch with my family. But I really want you to come by tonight if you can. There’s something I want to show you. I may not be able to narrow the temporal confinement yet, but last night I did it. I moved something.”

  “Through time?”

  “Through time. Inanimate matter, of course. Three grams of carbon.”

  “Ha ha! Wow! Where did you send it?”

  “That’s the problem. I thought I’d targeted it to two minutes in the future – but it didn’t show up for nearly three hours!”

  “Incredible! Did you –”

  An alarm on Ammon’s mobile device interrupted the call.

  The alarm simply read, “REACH IN YOUR POCKET”

  “I gotta go,” Ammon said. “I see my wife and daughter.”

  Ammon hung up, but left his earpiece in. He waved to his wife, who stood across the street waiting to cross State Street from the east, and to his daughter, who was also waiting to cross toward him, but across Broadway from the south – the two beautiful women about to converge on his spot on the northwest corner.

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a hand-written note. Folded into the note was a small gray pill that looked home-made. He read the brief note, and his face turned white in confusion mixed with faint recognition.

  He looked down at the pill in his hand, and quickly popped it his mouth, swallowing it dry.

  Instantly, his brain felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. He felt dizzy for a split second that felt like eternity. He was gripped by an uncontrollable urge to snarl and pant. He threw his hands up to his head and seized it, his fingers digging down through his dark curly hair to his scalp, his eyes ablaze with a sense of terror and sorrow, a loud ringing in his ears.

  After a moment, the wave of pain and emotion passed. He looked down at the crumpled note once more, and it all made sense now. His mind felt clear and resolute, but his heart heavy.

  Ammon looked up, and his wife and daughter were now both crossing the city streets toward him, one from each direction.

  He heard the angry honking of horns and glanced to his right.

  A red pickup truck swerved through traffic, traveling far too fast for downtown.

  Suddenly, time slowed down.

  The reckless speeding truck careened toward both his wife and his daughter.

  Ammon looked at each of them. Almost in unison, they turned away from him to look toward the commotion of the careening truck.

  Their faces turned from joy, to shock, to horror.

  In a moment that lasted forever, Ammon stared at the women, and glanced back at the truck.

  His heart pounded. Adrenaline rushed like fire coursing through his veins.

  Knowing what he had to do – what the pill seemed to be compelling him to do – he launched himself through the air toward his wife and knocked her down, wrapping his arms around her and rolling as they hit the ground.

  The truck’s front tire brushed against the sole of his shoe as it flew past. The tire rubber screeched as it burned against the road and spun around the corner.

  The out-of-control vehicle struck Esther with a bone-crunching thud. She rose up into the air, came down across the tailgate and bounced off onto the ground, her body limp like a ragdoll.

  Ammon stared as the truck disappeared up State Street to the sound of more honking horns.

  The world fell silent. He could only hear his heartbeat pounding in his head.

  Emma appeared okay, apart from a gash on her head. Ammon gripped then released her hand, and crawled quickly across the ground toward their beloved daughter.

  She rested upon the asphalt crumpled in an unnatural position, eyes open, body perfectly still, a pool of dark red blood forming under her head and rolling slowly toward the gutter.

  Ammon cradled his baby in his arms and wept.

  She was gone.

  The world started to spin around Ammon.

  Slowly at first, then faster and faster until it was just a blur. He felt like he was at the center of a great sinking drain. He thought he heard a siren in the midst of the whirlwind of visual disarray. The noise got louder and louder, topping out at a single, droning, ear-splitting pitch.

  Then black silence.

  #

  Ammon awoke to the faint sound of whimpering and sniffing.

  He realized after a few moments that it was his own quiet sobbing.

  He blinked and looked around, his eyes taking a frustrating moment to focus.

  The face of a man resolved against the subdued lighting of the windowless room.

  It was Dr. Jim Mayne. Ammon’s former college buddy, current close friend, and sometimes-collaborator in his temporal engineering experiments.

  “Jim?” he mumbled. “Jim, where’s Emma. And what about Esther?”

  “Ammon – don’t you remember what happened?”

  Ammon rubbed at his temple. “Yes, of course – of course I do. The accident. Emma hurt her head, and Esther – Esther…”

  “Ammon, Esther didn’t make it. She died at the scene. I’m so sorry.”

  Ammon swallowed hard, and a tear slid out of the outside corner of his eye. “I know.”

  Ammon struggled to sit up, and Jim assisted him by grabbing his shoulder and pulling gently.

  “Where am I?” Ammon asked. “What is this place? Where’s Emma?”

  “This is a special recovery suite at the University of Utah Hospital. Emma is upstairs in ICU. She bumped her head pretty good. Don’t worry – she’s going to be fine. We just have to keep her in a chemical coma for a few days – maybe a couple of weeks – while the brain swelling is reduced. But a neural scan checks out – she will heal completely, in time.”

  “Why am I in here? I feel fine.”

  “Well, Ammon – that’s the thing. We’re keeping you here for observation – and because we can’t have you leave this room until we??
?ve figured out what’s going on with your physiology.”

  “What do you mean, my physiology?”

  “Ammon – you seem to be in fine health, but there’s something happening with your brain. I’m only a pharmacologist, so I can’t explain it. Well, nobody can explain it just yet. Your brain is producing a strange kind of quantum radiation – and it’s causing some kind of interference with time-based technology – anything with an internal chronometer goes haywire in your presence. Look at my watch – it’s running backwards – well, mostly – just from being near you.”

  He held up his forearm and pulled back the sleeve on his white lab coat, displaying the expensive gold wristwatch with its sweeping second hand moving gradually counter-clockwise with occasional stoppages and jerks into forward motion.

  “I don’t understand,” said Ammon softly.

  “Ammon – this may have something to do with your project – the one only you and I know about. Are you sure you only sent carbon through the temporal shifter?”

  “Of course! I told you that it was just a test – one that needed further refinement. I haven’t sent myself through, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Well, until we figure it out, we need to keep you isolated. If we tried to walk you through the hospital, you’d present a risk to all the patients because of what the radiation would do to our equipment. You’re safe for other humans, but not the technology.”

  Ammon put his head in his hands and sighed heavily. “I need my equipment. Can you go to the lab at my house, bring me my work? I am so close, Jim. I could go back – go back and change this. Make it so Esther doesn’t – doesn’t die.”

  “Ammon – you only sent a tiny amount of carbon through – and it didn’t even work right – you told me yourself the timing was way off. That was inanimate material, not a two-hundred pound, living, conscious being. And besides, that was forwards in time, not backwards. You don’t even know what might happen if you were to go back – will you interact with your past self and implode the space-time continuum? Or will you somehow merge with your old self? You just don’t know.”

  “Well, I have to try, Jim! I have to try!” Tears slid out of the corners of his eyes.

  Jim stared at his friend for a few moments. “Okay, Ammon – what do you need?”

  “All of it. I need my computer, my notes, the white board, and the chronoporter device itself. It’s not very large – you should be able to manage it fairly easily.”

  “Listen, Ammon – about Esther. We could contact your brother, or your sisters – but I know they’re in Vermont. As far as funeral arrangements – I can contact them, or we can wait to see about getting you out of here. For now, Esther’s body is down in the morgue, Emma is unconscious, and you’re stuck in here. What do you want me to do?”

  Ammon stared into the abyss. “Nothing.” His voice was flat. “I’m going to undo all of this. I’m going to go back and change it. I’ll save Esther.”

  The corner of Jim’s mouth twitched as if he was repressing a smile. “Very well. I will bring you your project. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied for a while. You should get some rest while I’m gone.”

  “Rest? I’ve been resting ever since the accident. I’m ready to work.”

  “The rest you got wasn’t very restful. I looked in on you while you were asleep, and you seemed to be having violent nightmares.” He stood up and reached into the pocket of his lab coat. “Here, take this pill. You may get to play with temporal mechanics, but as an expert in psychiatric biochemistry, I get to play around with my own creations. This little baby should give you some great rest, and help you leave those nasty dreams behind.”

  He handed the little gray pill to Ammon. Ammon’s stomach lurched for a moment when he reached for it, and he had a vague sense of déjà vu. “Have you given me this pill before?”

  “No – this one’s new. Just finalized it last week. Now, rest up while I go round up your gear.”

  Within moments of Jim closing the door on what felt like a jail cell to Ammon, the drug began to kick in. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes, felt a dizzying sensation for a few moments, then was out.

  #

  Ammon found himself standing at his wife’s bedside in ICU.

  “Why, Ammon? Why?” Emma cried, her dark auburn hair shaved on one side of her head to reveal a set of large stitches. “You should have saved Esther and let me die! How could you?”

  “I did it without thinking,” Ammon stammered. “It was a heartbeat decision that came from some deep subconscious level. I don’t know why I chose you. My mind must have calculated that you were closer.”

  He looked down and saw the note in his hand, and the gray pill. He felt like he was lying, but didn’t know why. He could not explain his decision – not even to himself.

  He looked back at Emma, and she was no longer on the hospital bed.

  She was in a casket.

  “Why?” she screamed.

  A red truck came out of nowhere and blasted through the coffin, shattering it into tiny splinters. In its place was a giant hole in the earth – a bottomless void.

  Ammon flailed his arms as he fell into it. Falling…falling…falling.

  Ammon awoke with a start, breathing heavily.

  Jim was there, shaking his shoulder. “Ammon, wake up!”

  Ammon wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at his friend. “Nice pill, Jim. Gave me nightmares. How long was I out, twenty minutes?”

  “Seven hours,” Jim said. “It took me that long to gather your stuff and set it up. There wasn’t much hardware, but the connections were pretty complex, and I wanted to be sure not to mess it up. So I carefully dismantled it and reassembled it for you. As for the pill I gave you, it shouldn’t have given you nightmares. It’s specifically designed for a calming effect.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry – you’ve been through a major trauma – I guess it just wasn’t strong enough. Come on – follow me.”

  Ammon slowly rose from the bed, his joints stiff and sore. He hobbled after his friend, who showed him to a door on the wall opposite the bed. Jim opened it and led the way into an adjoining room – windowless like the other room, but well-lit with rows of bright white LEDs lining the ceiling and walls.

  In the center of the room sat a table with Ammon’s computer and notebooks. To the right, his whiteboard. To the left, on the floor, a small round platform of platinum and black rubber, with several wires protruding from the back.

  The chronoporter.

  “Nice work,” Ammon said. “Looks like you got it all hooked back up. Now – let me get to work.”

  “You sound like you’re in a hurry,” said Jim. “You do realize that if you actually succeed – if you go back in time – you’ll make it so that Esther lives, and all this pain you feel will never have been.”

  “I am in a hurry,” Ammon said. “First off, this pain is unbearable. I don’t want to prolong it – for me, or for Emma when she wakes up. I know it’ll all be erased, but I am in agony, Jim. I have to change this, and change it as soon as possible. Second, although I can hardly imagine this stinging pain ever going away, I know for a fact that time does help to heal wounds – just a little. It’s human nature. As much as I hate this pain, I don’t want to let it dim at all, so that I can stay driven to make this project work. I will take this pain and use it.”

  “Fair enough, Ammon. You do your thing. Let me know if you need anything. I’m sure I could smuggle you down a guinea pig or two from the lab.”

  “Just one thing,” said Ammon. “Can I see my wife?”

  “I’m sorry, Ammon – she’s in ICU. Your condition would wreak havoc on the equipment. But I promise to take some video on my tablet and bring it with me next time I see you. Of course, she’s just lying there, but it’s something.”

  “Okay,” Ammon said. “Well, at least my own equipment will work. I provided the laptop and the device itself with chronovariant shielding before I even ran my first test.
I wish I had enough of the stuff to wrap this whole hospital.”

  Jim moved to the door and stepped through into the recovery room. “Just contact me if you need anything. I’ll talk to you later.”

  #

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ammon was obsessed.

  He crunched numbers, sketched diagrams, and checked and rechecked the wiring on his device.

  He ate next to nothing, and slept only when his eyes grew so heavy he could not stare at the screen any longer without finding himself slipping directly into dreams.

  He repeated his daughter’s name in his head, over and over while his computer ran simulations and ran lengthy calculations.

  He experimented with a few grams of carbon that Jim brought, but had no success. Something was wrong with one of the equations.

  As he continued to focus on his dear daughter’s name, he suddenly saw it – the answer appeared in his mind, as the letters transposed themselves.

  Esther.

  S=Ether.

  “S” was his variable for translocation. “Ether” was a long-discredited theory about the contents of interstellar space. But there was something to this. The translocation coordinates – the destination of the time travel – needed to account for the natural energy that exists in space and all around us on earth. The baseline was not zero, as he’d been calculating, but another figure – one suited to the full quantum energy signature.

  He plugged the new parameters into his equation-crunching program, hit enter, and watched the numbers scroll up the screen. The calculations were highly complex – accounting for all relative spatial motion over time.

  After a few intense minutes, the scrolling numbers stopped, and the result had no errors.

  “Yes!” he shouted.

  Had he known all along? Had he named his daughter, all those years ago, with the subconscious understanding that she would be the key to this breakthrough? Such speculation made Ammon’s already pounding head hurt even more.

  Carefully, he placed five grams of carbon on the circular chronoporter pad, and prepared the temporal shifter by punching in the newly calculated translocation coordinates.

  Four minutes into the future.