Bradigan let out an audible, pfft. “Right now?” He asked. “No months of planning or extensive technical tests? Just ‘Hey, you want to jump through time?’ and go?”
“Oh would you relax, Doctor?” Valeria said. “We actually have a simple jump scheduled for today that concerns you. Now is as good a time as any.” She walked over to the chamber and waved her badge in front of a small console. The console beeped and the chamber began to retract into the ceiling until it was just over a meter above the floor. Valeria slipped under the veil and began to fiddle with the rover.
“Don’t misunderstand, Doctor.” Zachariah said. “We’ve yet to send any people through the tear. Aside from the tear being rather small currently, the conditions created within the chamber are . . . inhospitable to living tissue. But we’ve successfully used this modified rover to deliver and retrieve objects through time.” He clapped his hands together. “I’m excited for you to see some of the relics we’ve recovered; beautiful pieces unaffected by time’s deconstructive effects.”
“So you’ve been stealing artifacts from the past?” Bradigan said as Valeria reengaged the chamber. “That must be very lucrative, selling pristine pieces.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Doctor?” Valeria asked, more than a little annoyed. “This isn’t about the money, it’s about the history. Nothing we’ve recovered has, or will ever, leave this facility.” She turned to Zachariah. “She’s ready, Doc.”
“Good, I’ll make final preparations. You can make your way back to the control room.”
“Wait, I have more questions.” Bradigan protested.
“I’m sure you do, come on.” Valeria said, practically pushing him out of the room.
They moved into the hallway and Zachariah’s voice came over the intercom: Attention. Hermes will be going live in five minutes. All non-essential personnel clear the test chamber. All essential personnel to your stations for final checks.
“I don’t like being treated like a child Miss Davis,” Bradigan said. “I want to know what’s going on. Why does this jump concern me, how does it work, what are the risks . . .”
“Oh would you shut up?” Valeria said in exasperation. “What is your problem? Are you so afraid of the unknown, of experiencing things you’ve never experienced before, that you try to bring down everyone around you?”
“So you’re a psychoanalyst now?”
“When it’s obvious, yes!”
Three minutes and counting.
“I am not moving from this spot until I have my answers!”
“And you wonder why I’m . . .” she did air quotes, “’treating you like a child.’ Stay here if you want but I’ll tell you right now, you won’t be able to see anything.” She pointed behind him, blast doors were closing over the entrance.
When Bradigan turned back around, Valeria was already jogging up the hallway, Pip walking quickly behind, to the control room. Irritating woman, he thought and hurried after her. When he arrived, he found her standing behind Ben and Missy who were diligently working their keyboards, scanning walls of text on screen faster than he could imagine. Valeria made it a point to ignore his presence.
For the first time in his life, Bradigan watched in silence as everything happened around him. As the text on their monitors refreshed over and over Ben and Missy quickly announced numbers and letters to each other, back and forth like an Olympic table tennis match. Valeria, smile on her face, intently watched her technicians work. She couldn’t be prouder of them.
One minute and counting.
Suddenly, Missy tore one of the needles from her bun and put it to the screen, running it along the most recent sequence of numbers until she announced calmly, “I’ve got it.” after a quick sequence of button presses with her other hand the same figures appeared on Ben’s monitor.
“Confirmed,” he said, and with another quick sequence of button presses, the info disappeared and one of the scientists in the test chamber held up his hand. Ben and Missy sat back in their chairs and shared a fist bump.
Zachariah’s voice rang out over the intercom again, Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .
“Ready, Doctor,” Valeria said, “for the ultimate frontier?”
Bradigan was awestruck as Hermes came to life. Lights flashed along the whole of the monstrosity and it began to vibrate violently. Bradigan could see why the technological behemoth was tethered to the ceiling; were it secured, it would shake the entire complex along with it.
Missy grabbed a microphone from next to her monitor and spoke, “Hermes registering operating efficiency of ninety-eight percent, Doctor.”
Zachariah waved up to the control room, having heard the message, and began issuing orders to his team. He walked between each station, conferring with his colleagues who were watching the many readouts. After some time, he held up his hand and gestured, Okay, to the control room.
“We have clearance to proceed, Miss Davis,” Missy announced.
“Good,” she answered. “Ben, you have the coordinates.”
Ben typed away at his keyboard. “Coordinates sent . . . Hermes is confirming receipt.”
Valeria nodded. “Final checks.”
After a moment, Ben answered, “Clear.”
Missy, into her microphone, “Clear.”
Zachariah, over the intercom, “Clear.”
Valeria smiled. “Engage.”
Bradigan watched as the chamber was suddenly flooded with a fine mist through nozzles in the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a second monitor on Ben’s desk go completely white, it must have been attached to the rover inside the chamber. The mist began to swirl and collect in the middle beneath Hermes. Bradigan’s eyes jumped back and forth between the window and the rover’s mounted camera. To his amazement, the inside wall of the chamber began to grow a lattice of ice crystals, it was being super-cooled. The swirling mist collected itself into a pillar of ice and Hermes let out a screech, a warning sound, before firing a beam into the pillar. Bradigan watched through the rover’s point of view as the pillar crumbled outward, the pieces moving in such a way it seemed as if they were trying to escape from one another until the pillar had been completely vaporized.
Bradigan couldn’t believe his eyes. He fumbled with his thoughts, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, but the simplest way he would come to describe the phenomenon was: like having a picture book where the first page had a hole through which you could see the second. The rover’s screen saw the test chamber but also a dome of invisible matter that acted as a window into another room. With a bit of study, Bradigan realized he was looking into the room he was currently standing in.
“Tear established and holding,” Missy said, snapping Bradigan out of his trance.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Valeria answered. “Make the delivery.”
Ben took the rover controls and piloted the little machine closer to the anomaly. Clearly experienced at driving it, he deftly reached out with the mechanical arm and pierced the dome. Bradigan turned around, somehow expecting to see the rover’s hand reaching through space behind him.
“You won’t see it.” Valeria had noticed him looking. “I’m surprised you realized where we opened the tear but we opened it into yesterday.”
Ben pressed another button and the rover opened its capsule of a hand and dropped a simple note onto the floor of yesterday’s control room. He maneuvered back, away from the tear. “Mission accomplished.”
“Alright, seal it up.”
Missy nodded, picking up her microphone. “Commence closing procedures.”
As the sound of the machines wound down, Bradigan stepped forward and stood next to Valeria. He watched the tear destabilize as power was routed away from Hermes before he finally spoke, “What did you deliver.”
Valeria smiled and reached into her jacket pocket, producing a small note. She handed it to him. “See for yourself.”
Bradigan opened the note and read, in Valeria’s handwriting: The rain stopped at 5:43pm.
Writer by Grace 