Timepiece
Theoretical physics was his occupation for forty-three years. As a boy he had looked up at the night sky and wondered about the heavens full of stars. He had wondered at their beauty from the back yard of the rectory in Lincoln, Missouri. The son of a strict Lutheran minister, young Paul Wistead was forbidden from following his science calling. But he fought for it and finally gained his independence, although it was at the expense of his own family. Paul’s life would evolve from a struggle against religious dogma to a steel-hard determination to discover the real secrets of creation. His faith was in the stars and the power that drove them.
The big sky on those western plains with none of the light pollution of the big city had shown him those galaxies of stars that twinkled out there like jewels on a giant black ocean. But it was in high school that the question of time travel had set its roots in him and the light from those stars had become part of an equation he had cogitated ever since. The cogitations had developed and solidified into miles of strings of equations and those private struggles with time, space and mass had finally led him here, to CERN, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
Dr. Paul Wistead poured a Jack Daniels and Coke and it tasted good.
“Here’s to you , Harry Pike,” he said raising his plastic cup, “Rest in peace you simple bastard.”
His hand shook but it would stop shaking if he concentrated on it. Anyway, he deserved one because this was the big day. Project Timepiece was finally going to work. There had been too many setbacks and false starts, too many failed attempts and roadblocks to this final breakthrough. There was no room for error this time.
A nervous little man with shockingly white hair, his diminutive physical appearance belied the magnitude of his cerebral gift. His gift had led him not into the bright lights and adoration of the scientific community, but rather deeper and deeper into smaller and smaller enclaves of black budget projects of the government. In fact, he went physically deeper and deeper underground as things progressed until he now resided nearly a kilometer under the CERN complex where the time physics moles worked their magic. And he was head mole of an very small, very elite group.
The clock on his desk said 9:35am, so he still had twenty-five minutes until his meeting with Dr. Deloran Manzak, project director. There was no love lost here and Paul’s severe, driven attitude caused constant clashes with others whom he felt inferior. Paul’s drinking had become his crutch in dealing with lesser minds. It also had fueled his nights of inspiration that evolved into greatness. His failing liver was outpaced by a perfect mind.
He went through the events again that led him to this moment in time. So much stress and so many distractions that were beyond his control, government boondoggles and secretive meetings. The legality of Timepiece and the ethics of it never bothered him. It was a Black Project in a dangerous world and good or bad, these terms had no meaning because the outside world was really of no interest to him. He was single-minded with two super computers at his disposal.
What they were doing this morning was “not a big deal” according to Dr. Manzak. And the simple fact was that it was just going to take a few minutes. Just a few minutes indeed, but the outcome was off-the-scale huge. It was actually so huge that it dwarfed any scientific experiment in history to date if it finally succeeded. And that’s why the controls were in place. Anything they wished for was provided. The depth and breadth of this project was beyond all measure. Ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent for a success or failure that would only take ten minutes. There could be no more failures. Serious earthquakes were the result of such failures, the most recent one striking neighboring Italy in 2016.
There would be a guinea pig. Wistead only knew his first name, Perry. He was a middle aged man who was richly compensated to participate in the experiment. The funds had been deposited to an account of his choosing two days ago. Perry had no family and no one who would ask after him should he disappear off the grid.
The outside world marveled at a defining achievement in the discovery of a new particle which fitted neatly into equations and explained God. The Higgs boson was the largest leap in physics since Newton’s apple. But in reality, it was only an offshoot of this grand experiment of which Paul Wistead had become the linchpin. The incredibly complex facilities at CERN which were shown to the world were merely the tip of the iceberg which sat atop a 1.3 trillion dollar machine, a technical behemoth which could warp time.
Wistead and Dr. Harold Pike had co-developed this project. But there were neverending clashes over the theory. Pike was adamant that Wistead’s conclusions were corrupted. The very different personality issues between the two had led to actual physical altercations before the elder Dr. Pike had suffered a catastrophic stroke four years ago, never to return . Wistead had soldiered on alone.
Dr. Manzak was an appointee from on high who had the power and authority to move mountains if need be to achieve the ultimate goal. Dr. Wistead had been sequestered here for six years for that purpose. Those in high positions were watching and growing anxious as this moment approached and Manzac was their conduit at CERN to complete their vision. The God particle was nothing to them.
It was now 9:55am and the glass was again empty. He was right about his hand. It had stopped shaking.
“Paul, my guy!” Dr. Manzak rose from his mahogany desk to motion him to take a seat in a plush leather chair. “Are you ready for this? This will henceforth formally be known as your ten minutes of fame!”
“I have to say that I’m nervous as hell. And why wouldn’t I be?” Paul replied. “This project is nerve wracking.” He hated how Manzak made light of things and the constant sarcasm mixed with phony appreciation.
“Come now Paul, I’ve told you before to just relax. Everything is going to roll out like we planned. Checked and double checked. Nothing left to chance. You got this ball rolling and now it’s time to knock it out of the park.” Mandrake rose and came around the desk. “We’re almost there, Paul”, he said putting his hand on Wistead’s shoulder. “Let’s not fuck this up.”
“It will go as planned.” Wistead’s insides went tight as he spoke those words.
“So is Perry. He’s going to do fine and so are you. Your baby is about to be born. Paul, just think what you and Harold created. A twenty-seven kilometer worm hole machine that can take our friend Perry into the future”
The worm hole was the product of their relentless pursuit over those trying years and although the physics was there, the energy required had not been there…until now. The energy problem was eventually solved when they had harnessed the unfathomable power of this electromagnetic engine to open a mini black hole on one end of a cycle and close it on the other. The physics was all there. The black budget supercomputers had confirmed it worked. And it had worked more than once in the simulations. It was the world’s best kept secret that was in plain sight. CERN had built a time machine.
“Yes, but it should just take him ten minutes ahead in time. It will take us a lot longer and billions more to advance farther down that road.” Paul sat uncomfortably on the front of the chair.
“That’s for later, this is now. Right now there are no higher stakes than Timepiece. Everything is on the line and the light is green for go. I think we should go and find our man Perry,” Dr. Manzac rose to go. He was beyond tired of the ever negative attitude on display and of the smell of alcohol that wafted across the room. It had already been decided from above that this would either be Dr. Wistead’s hour of glory or his final flameout.
They went through the building to the private elevator which was at their sole disposal and prepared for the descent 3/4 kilometer underground. The ride took nine minutes during which neither spoke. This was it, zero hour. When the door opened, they were met by a small cadre of tech specialists and headed to the waiting room. The size of this team did not reflect its importance but the “need to know” excluded everyone but the crucial few that ran this project called Timepiece. There were just three techies and two physicists who would gain access to this otherwise inaccessible room deep in the bowels of the CERN complex. Literally hundreds of thousands of kilometers of shielded cable and synthetic fibers snaked through this technological wonder and the business end of things was down here way below where the security passes ended. The “need to know” scientists were one half of a kilometer up above this hyper-sealed machine room where the air conditioning droned continuously.
Perry Cogswell looked up passively from his seat in the waiting room and put down the magazine he was reading as they came in through the locked door. He’d been mildly sedated by an additive to the soft drink he’d finished. An unopened bag of pretzels sat on the coffee table in front of him.
Dr. Manzak offered his hand and introduced the team to him before proceeding down the hallway once more to another small room. Perry seemed nonplussed by all the computer equipment which filled every nook and cranny and he asked no questions. If he was nervous he didn’t show it.
“Here we are folks. This is where we spend a few minutes of our time and then solve all the problems of the universe”, Manzak said with a wave of his arm and a forced laugh.
They stood in front of a polished metallic door which was half opened. It was made of thick molybdenum and contained a small window. The three techies went to their posts somewhere outside the room while Perry was led inside by Dr. Manzak. Paul followed them in and walked over to the cushy easy chair which stood in the center of the cylindrical room which had no other furnishings except a clock on the facing wall. Paul had thought of the chair. Manzak had wanted one similar to a dentist chair but Paul had felt the comfy recliner would relax their subject more. Paul had also nixed the idea of arm straps that Manzac had felt necessary in the event of a panicky subject. It was Paul’s idea to sedate him and try to make him comfortable. This wasn’t supposed to feel like the electric chair. After all, the room itself would not move. Energy would be passed through huge vertical flux conductors above and below the “tube” which began and ended there.
“Okay, you boys get comfy and I’ll check you out on the big screen TV,” Dr. Manzac said as he left the room.
The inside of the tube “room” was the light green color of a hospital ward, the kind of color that is supposed to induce calm. Paul was not calm but was trying his best to allay any fears that Perry could be feeling. A comfy chair, a nice sedative-induced high and a much larger bank account served that purpose for Perry. And if all went well, Perry would be a very rich man who would be ten minutes younger than everyone else on earth.
“Everything okay Perry? I’ll just be gone for about five minutes or so, then we’ll be back in to see you.” Paul’s hands were sweaty and his right hand had begun to tremble slightly.
“Okay, Doc, see you,” Perry said and looked up at the clock. “Hey, I remember this.”
“What did you say?” Paul asked suddenly in half turn. “What do you mean, you remember? What do you remember?”
“That clock at 10:45 and you saying what you just said. It’s like déjà vu or something.” Perry giggled a little to himself. “This is weird.”
Paul’s heart beat quickened. He realized that he was also experiencing what could be a flashback of some kind. It was a kind of swoon like he’d felt before an alcoholic blackout. But he was far from being drunk. His mind raced as he assuaged the situation because something felt very wrong. And Perry couldn’t have remembered this room, unless...
He turned to look at the door. It was now closed. There were two faces peering through the door at him and one of them looked like Harold Pike. That was impossible. How could Pike be here? Why was the door closed? It locked on the other side. Paul quickly realized that Harold Pike was the only one who could carry on this project if Paul was to fail.
But nobody had failed yet.
Failure had been defined as either it didn’t work at all or a loop might be created if an uncertainty would occur. A loop meant that the transfer through the ten minutes of time would be incomplete and the subject would leave the original time frame but never arrive back at the base coordinate reality. The error parameters were so infinitesimally small, they were considered insignificant.
“My God, what if...” he gasped, as the déjà vu crystalized. What if one of his equation strings had been wrong? What if he’s locked in here with Perry when the energy transfers and the worm hole opens? What if this ten minutes is all there is for him...trapped in a box, doomed to spend this ten minutes over and over in a glitch… for eternity.
“Hey, Doc. I remember something else really clear in this dream I had. You’re yelling like hell and pounding on that door right there to get out.” Perry closed his eyes and settled back again to relax.
Paul felt suddenly nauseous and screamed as he lunged towards the door.
As his ghost would do an infinite number of times, forever.
J K Gibson is a retired ad salesman whose life is filled with Greek history/mythology and scifi. When not adventure motorcycling around Greece he is pursuing his hobby of fantasizing on his laptop about science fiction.