a letter for the day of the week:
M, T, W, T, F, S, S,
all the way across the paper.
Then she drew an arrow coming down between Monday and Tuesday. “Someone came through early Monday morning but we don’t know who. Whoever it was knew enough to bypass the security at the Transit Laboratory, and to send himself. We know when he—”
“He?”
“For the sake of convenience, I’ll say ‘he’ instead of ‘he or she,’ but it could just as easily be a woman. Anyway, because of the computer settings, we know when and where he transited. In the beginning, the weight of the transportee had to be known and the computer calibrated for that weight, but that was too dangerous, because what if he gained weight, even just a pound, in the other time? He wouldn’t be able to get back. So that method was refined, and now the weight doesn’t matter, just the links.”
“Links?”
He was a master at one-word questions, she thought. “They’re actual, physical links, worn around the ankles and the wrists, programmed to both send and retrieve.”
“So where are yours?”
“Safely buried, where no one can find them. If I lose my links, I can’t get back unless a SAR is sent with replacement links.”
“When we say SAR we mean Search and Rescue,” he observed.
“That’s what it still means. They’re a squad of specially trained commandos, because no one knows what conditions they will be going into. Usually just one SAR is sent, to diminish the chance of attracting attention.”
He propped his chin in his hand and smiled at her. “If you’re spinning a yarn, it’s a damn good one. You have quite an imagination. Go on.”
She gave him a long, level look. “If you thought this was pure fabrication, you wouldn’t be wasting your time listening, and you know it. Not only that, if this were an interrogation we wouldn’t be in your office, we’d be in an interrogation room and this would be taped. Maybe you don’t want to believe me, but you can’t explain any of my equipment, can you?”
“I’m listening. Don’t ask for more than that.”
She needed a lot more than that from him, but for the moment she let the subject drop and went back to the chart she was drawing. “A message was left on a computer at the Transit Lab, sort of a catch-me-if-you-can statement.” She paused. “You need to understand that there are several groups who are against time travel, for whatever reason. Some see it as a moral issue—that you shouldn’t tamper with what God hath wrought, that kind of thing. For others it’s more practical, as in, don’t change history because all hell might break loose.”
“Theoretically, you can’t change history.”
“On a small basis, at least, that’s wrong. Say someone in my time discovered records of a winning lottery number. He could come back in time and buy a ticket with that same number, and the winnings would be split between him and the other winner or winners. Only the amount of money each lottery player won would change, and there would perhaps be a minuscule economic ripple but nothing else.”
“And the time traveler would then take his winnings back to his own time.”
“Yes, but the currency would be of value only to antiques collectors, so in effect he’d be taking back a specialized commodity rather than currency.”
“How about changing history on a large basis?”
“Time travel is extremely regulated; not just anyone is allowed to do it, because of the possible danger. What would happen if, say, someone went back in time and assassinated Hitler before World War II started? What would the repercussions be? Without the war to invigorate economies that had been devastated by the Great Depression, what would life for the next century have been like?”
“You mean the United States wouldn’t be a superpower.”
“No one knows, and that’s the danger of trying to change large-scale history. But if the United States hadn’t been catapulted to superpower
M, T, W, T, F, S, S,
all the way across the paper.
Then she drew an arrow coming down between Monday and Tuesday. “Someone came through early Monday morning but we don’t know who. Whoever it was knew enough to bypass the security at the Transit Laboratory, and to send himself. We know when he—”
“He?”
“For the sake of convenience, I’ll say ‘he’ instead of ‘he or she,’ but it could just as easily be a woman. Anyway, because of the computer settings, we know when and where he transited. In the beginning, the weight of the transportee had to be known and the computer calibrated for that weight, but that was too dangerous, because what if he gained weight, even just a pound, in the other time? He wouldn’t be able to get back. So that method was refined, and now the weight doesn’t matter, just the links.”
“Links?”
He was a master at one-word questions, she thought. “They’re actual, physical links, worn around the ankles and the wrists, programmed to both send and retrieve.”
“So where are yours?”
“Safely buried, where no one can find them. If I lose my links, I can’t get back unless a SAR is sent with replacement links.”
“When we say SAR we mean Search and Rescue,” he observed.
“That’s what it still means. They’re a squad of specially trained commandos, because no one knows what conditions they will be going into. Usually just one SAR is sent, to diminish the chance of attracting attention.”
He propped his chin in his hand and smiled at her. “If you’re spinning a yarn, it’s a damn good one. You have quite an imagination. Go on.”
She gave him a long, level look. “If you thought this was pure fabrication, you wouldn’t be wasting your time listening, and you know it. Not only that, if this were an interrogation we wouldn’t be in your office, we’d be in an interrogation room and this would be taped. Maybe you don’t want to believe me, but you can’t explain any of my equipment, can you?”
“I’m listening. Don’t ask for more than that.”
She needed a lot more than that from him, but for the moment she let the subject drop and went back to the chart she was drawing. “A message was left on a computer at the Transit Lab, sort of a catch-me-if-you-can statement.” She paused. “You need to understand that there are several groups who are against time travel, for whatever reason. Some see it as a moral issue—that you shouldn’t tamper with what God hath wrought, that kind of thing. For others it’s more practical, as in, don’t change history because all hell might break loose.”
“Theoretically, you can’t change history.”
“On a small basis, at least, that’s wrong. Say someone in my time discovered records of a winning lottery number. He could come back in time and buy a ticket with that same number, and the winnings would be split between him and the other winner or winners. Only the amount of money each lottery player won would change, and there would perhaps be a minuscule economic ripple but nothing else.”
“And the time traveler would then take his winnings back to his own time.”
“Yes, but the currency would be of value only to antiques collectors, so in effect he’d be taking back a specialized commodity rather than currency.”
“How about changing history on a large basis?”
“Time travel is extremely regulated; not just anyone is allowed to do it, because of the possible danger. What would happen if, say, someone went back in time and assassinated Hitler before World War II started? What would the repercussions be? Without the war to invigorate economies that had been devastated by the Great Depression, what would life for the next century have been like?”
“You mean the United States wouldn’t be a superpower.”
“No one knows, and that’s the danger of trying to change large-scale history. But if the United States hadn’t been catapulted to superpower
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