It was Time for the First Jump. (Chapter 1)
Seth had lumbered into his space suit and was adjusting his respirator. No one knew what happened when you went through time, so (despite Seth’s cocky protestations) they made every effort to compensate for any scenario. Gene thought that it was perfectly plausible that you went into dead space and waited until the desired time came for you to re-enter the timeline, and he wanted to make sure that Seth wouldn’t die of decompression if he was placed in a vacuum to be held for re-entry. They supplied Seth with enough oxygen for one week (as well as food). He looked like a goofy turtle with everything he needed being held in this massive shell on his back. He could barely walk. He hated the thing, and always seemed a little too willing to try the jump in plain-clothes.
Gene was tempted to let him do it. After all, it would get rid of him if it didn’t work, which Gene liked to think would make him happy because it would make his life much easier. But Gene wasn’t about to be responsible for sending someone (even someone he didn’t like) to his death.
They had agreed to send Seth one week into the future. No real rhyme or reason for the week long increment, it just seemed like a good amount of time. Long enough to be amazing, but short enough for it to be a bearable wait for Seth if he was aware of the time passing. Really what it came down to was that a week was how long Seth had insisted when Gene told Seth that he would be sending Seth on his first jump today. Fine, no need to have another screaming match, and Gene would be happy to be rid of Seth for a full week, plus Gene could not control when or where Seth went when he jumped anyways so even if they did argue about it he knew Seth would just do what he wanted no matter what.
Once they powered up the machine it would be possible for Seth to go to the future and have himself sent back to the moment after he stepped through the gate the first time, making it appear as if he were simply stepping through a door and coming out the other side. If in the future Gene were so inclined, he could send Seth back to the moment after he had left. That would mean it would almost appear the whole thing did not work. But then in one weeks time Seth would have to jump over the time he had jumped into the future to keep from killing himself, or so Gene theorized. They had all agreed that complicating the first jump like that would be a bad idea. Seth would go, and would stay in the future. One week, a one way trip.
The whole thing was controlled by a satellite, and really the door that the traveler was to walk through was only symbolic and didn’t actually do anything. The traveler had a microchip implanted in his head just behind his ear, which interfaced with his brain through electrical impulses that humans are constantly leaking and absorbing. The traveler simply concentrated hard enough on an exact date that the microchip picked up and broadcast to the satellite; which is why Gene had no control over Seth’s jumps. The satellite would pick up the signal, home in on the traveler and translate forward motion through physical space into forward motion through time to the specified re-entry date.
Walking through the door was the psychological trigger that the traveler needed to initiate the time jump event. To jump back in time, the traveler (once in the future) simply turned on their heel (while concentrating hard enough) and popped back out the other side of the door. The satellite was designed to transform your physical structure into information which it would store and then at the appropriate time retranslate that information back into your physical structure while dropping you anywhere in the world you wanted going forward, but only one place (the other side of the marble door frame) when going back. Kind of a stupid design, but it was a prototype so it was fine.
Travelling backwards was the tricky part since the satellite couldn’t simply “store” your “information” and rebuild you at the specified time. It involved encoding your information onto a single particle and throwing it back through time to a special receiver, which I’ll explain more later, that would then rebuild you the instant it received your signal.
Roger, Gene’s replacement, finished plugging in the final wires and they all held their breath as Gene pressed the big red “power” button. The whole machine hummed to life. The new software successfully uploaded to their satellite with the final patches and bug fixes, and a little green light indicated all systems were a go.
Seth sneered at Gene and began lumbering towards the door. Just before he stepped into the door, he sarcastically called out “beam me up Scotty!” and then stepped through.
It’s an odd thing to describe watching a person, lumbering in a giant turtle-like space suit through a marble door-frame standing all lonely in the center of a dimly lit room, not disappear when you expect them to. That’s not to say nothing happened. It was like watching some sort of cheesy computer animated splice job special effect. As the front of ’space suit Seth’ went in, so the front of ’bruised/scratched/beaten Seth’ came out, until all of Seth collapsed unconscious on the other side of the doorway.
Roger snatched up the phone to call for a medic while Gene scrambled around the console and rushed over to Seth. Seth had a large bump on the back of his head, most likely a concussion. He looked like he had been tortured.
Gene and Roger argued about what to do. If the base was going to be infiltrated some time in the next week, which was the most probable conclusion they were able to come to, they needed to know as soon as possible when that was going to happen. It could be any minute. For all they knew they could be dead in twenty minutes and Seth had tried to come back to warn them. Or either of themselves could be waiting in the future for one of them to jump so they could come back to warn themselves.
In the end they decided that since Roger had gone through basic training and actually served active duty as a spy he was the most qualified to try jumping ahead. They decided they should both get the chip implanted in their heads just to be safe.
It took only a few painful minutes for them to inject the chip behind each other’s ears and then Roger was walking through the door way.
Since Gene was expecting him to appear coming out of the other side of the doorway it was odd when Roger stepped through and simply dissapeared.
Crap. The plan had been for Roger to jump nearly a week into the future, figure out what was going on, and come back to precisely the moment after he had jumped. As the minutes ticked by Gene became more and more anxious.
The medic they had called arrived and began tending to Seth.
“He’s beat up really bad sir” the medic commented. He looked worriedly at Gene, eyeing him up and down as if to say, ‘did you do this?’.
“Just wake him up” Was all he said in reply. The medic sighed and shrugged and got out some smelling salts.
Seth came awake with a start. He looked fearfully at Gene and looked all around the room. ”I’m… am I back? Is this…”
“You’re safe now” Gene interrupted him. The medic wasn’t cleared for any of this and Gene didn’t want anyone to know about any of it if they didn’t absolutely have to. He ordered the medic into the hallway to wait until he was needed again. The medic looked confused and unsure, but complied saying that he supposed Seth would be ok for a bit on his own and strongly encouraged Gene not to allow him to sleep before he received further treatment.
Gene and Seth watched as the medic stepped back into the hallway. As soon as the door closed behind him they began talking at once.
“What happened?”
“When am I?”
“You’re back where you started, we just watched you step through the door in the turtle suit and you came out the other side like this, what happened?”
“You…” Set paused and squinted at Gene. Then he frowned and looked down, “I don’t remember”.
‘Liar!’ Gene wanted to scream at him. What was he hiding?
Seth chuckled nervously, “sorry, the last thing I remember is stepping through that door.” He paused again looking around. ”Where’s Roger?” he asked finally.
“I sent him on ahead to try and find out what was going on. He was supposed to come back immediately, except he still hasn’t. He was supposed to arrive a few hours before you did.” Why had he told him? Any number of lies came to mind now, too late. He did not trust Seth and before his convenient ‘amnesia’ was past he was determined not to reveal anything else.
“Oh.” Was all Seth could muster in reply, still looking at the floor. Then he vomited.
“Good lord. DOC!” Gene threw the door back open, “looks like he’s worse than I thought…”
The medic scowled at Gene and shook his head as if to say, ‘not worse than I thought’ and rushed back in. He began re-checking Seth and after a moment told Gene it would be best if they got him to the infirmary for recovery.
Gene took one last look at the marble doorframe as they exited the lab supporting Seth between them. Where the heck was Roger?
