Kairos – Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: Most of these characters are not mine at all, but they are memorable. Thank you, Mr. Marlowe. The others? Yeah, they're mine.

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A/N: Hi there. So, my 'baby girl' has just graduated from high school, and my wife and I find ourselves stuck in the 'college orientation/preparation/weeping-don't-leave-us phase. Some of you, I know, have been there. We have, too. But somehow for the youngest, it's just different. Anyway, I now have a little more time on my hands, so I have been putting this story into words as that time allows. I will be posting a lot of chapters at once, as most of this is done – I am still working on the ending right now. I will post the first 6 chapters initially, as Chapter 6 is a good breaking point.

Anyway, two things to consider before diving into this story:

First, on April 22, 2013, ABC broadcast an episode entitled "The Squab and the Quail", or as I liked to call it, "The Beginning of the End". It was the episode which – in my admittedly highly opinionated mind – once-and-for-all cemented the ever-present downward spiral of Caskett as we knew it/hoped for. Within a month, Kate was inexplicably headed to Washington, D.C. The next week, however, (April 29), ABC broadcast an episode entitled 'Still", where Kate Beckett found herself stuck on a bomb.

The two episodes were originally planned to be broadcast in reverse order, with "Still" coming first on April 22, and "The Squab and the Quail" coming a week later. Logically, that's how it is should have flowed; however, the tragic events at the Boston Marathon that year caused ABC to change the order in which they were broadcast.

For the purposes of this imaginary tale, please assume that the "Still" episode was broadcast first, on April 22, 2013, as was originally planned. That's an important distinction for this story, as this story begins that following week.

Second, the science inferred by this story is hypothetical, based upon currently postulated theories. Of course, the standard disclaimer is that this story is steeped not just in science, but more in science fiction, so it requires you to just 'go with me' on a few liberties I take here. I want this to feel realistic, and hope it does for you, without trying to prove or disprove current scientific (and licensed) thinking.

Okay, enough disclaimers. One final thought before we step off. "Kairos" is an ancient Greek word, which means 'the right or opportune moment; the supreme moment." The Greeks employed a rich, beautiful language that was far more descriptive than the English we use today. To that end, they had two words to describe or denote 'time'. One word, Chronos, implied chronological time, sequential time, calendar / watch time if you will. That's the 'time' we all typically refer to. The second, Kairos, implied a moment of indeterminate time, a period or season where something of great significance occurs. Knowing these two definitions, I hope you see both the consistency and the irony in the title of this story.

Okay, off we go . . .

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Time.

He's waiting in the wings.

He speaks of senseless things.

His script is you and me.

- David Bowie, from the album Aladdin Sane, 1973

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Friday Morning – April 26, 2013, 11:23 a.m., at a Manhattan bookstore

Richard Castle's left hand is beginning to ache. He is an hour and a half into this book signing for the latest Nikki Heat novel, Heat in Time. It's proving to be his most popular effort yet, as it – for the first time – introduces science fiction concepts into his typical sexy-thriller mysteries around the adventures of Jameson Rook and Nikki Heat.

The current book includes a plot line where the two heroes are chasing a man who claims he has traveled through time. The story line is – to Castle's adolescent joy – bringing in a new element of fan that more resembles a comic-con cosplay event than just a mystery writer book-signing. Still, he is used to typing with his fingers, not writing with his hands, and this new audience that has visited him today is not the typical fan girl crowd that he is used to. There are actually males here, who are far more interested in, and impressed by, the science fiction angles introduced in his recent book. Further, many of the women this morning have demonstrated a proclivity more toward the sciences than he has seen in the past.

And, of course, they all want to debate his time-traveling theories ad nauseam.

Still, he finds the conversations stimulating, and is enjoying the new-found diversity of readers of his most recent work. He signs his name one more time, before leaning back and closing his eyes, rubbing them vigorously for a moment of brief respite.

It is short-lived, of course.

"Mr. Castle?" he hears the female voice in front of him call out.

He opens what he now realizes to be very tired eyes, and glances upward toward the voice. The woman in front of him wears dark blue jeans and a soft, tan colored sweater. Her long red hair hangs downward in curled locks, and her green eyes are framed by a festive pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She is vaguely familiar, quite beautiful, and everything about her screams 'acadameian.'

"And you are?" He asks, smile intact, his hand reaching out to take the copy of the book from her hands so he can sign it.

"Impressed," she replies with a smile, first shaking his hand and then handing her book over to him.

"Such flattery will get you everything and everywhere," he chuckles, returning the smile. "Although I'd really enjoy knowing the source of what impressed you," he continues, glancing downward at the book now in his hands. He opens it up to the first page, ready to sign.

"I'm Dr. Sandra Windholm," she begins, offering a glance backward at the much shorter line behind her now. She doesn't want to intrude on his time, nor take advantage of theirs. "I'm a physicist here in the city."

"Okay, you're not my typical reader," Castle wonders aloud, smiling. "Although today's crowd isn't my normal crowd either," he continues, glancing around at the odd mixture of people here today.

"True, I normally don't read your works, I admit," she begins. "One of my graduate assistants recommended Heat in Time, though. My team and I, we have been working on . . ."

She pauses, glancing backward again, before continuing, moving closer to Castle and lowering her voice.

"Let's just say that you actually were skirting very close to the truth in chapter six," she tells him, bringing a look of amused surprise to his face. Chapter six introduced the theories of time travel in his most recent novel.

"Do tell?" he asks, excitedly. "You have no idea how happy that makes me."

"Well, first of all, I was impressed that you didn't follow the traditional old-school science fiction thought process of time travel, which requires one to travel faster than the speed of light, "she tells him appreciatively. "Plausible, but –"

"Physically impossible," he finishes for her, drawing a smile of admiration.

"Very good, Mr. Castle," she responds. "Theoretically, according to Einstein, a signal could be sent back in time, but it would require immense levels of . . . no, scratch that, it would require an infinite amount of power."

"But sending a signal and sending a person are two different things," he replies, eyeing her evenly. She smiles again, further impressed.

"Star Trek movies about traveling back in time to capture humpback whales not-withstanding," she offers, and both share a quick laugh together. "Still," she continues, "if you did have this impossible, faster-than-light transport ship, you could journey – one way – into the future, spending, oh, twenty or thirty years traveling, but arrive centuries ahead in the future.

"That's why I picked wormholes," Castle says, trying hard – unsuccessfully – to hide the growing pride in his voice. While talking, his mind has flipped through the virtual rolodex in his head, and he has just placed the woman.

Dr. Sandra Windholm, MIT graduate from the early 1990's, specializing in quantum physics, and one of the prominent thought-leaders of the dynamics of space-time. He had seen her interviewed in a documentary a couple of years ago. Hence the familiar face when he first glanced at her. Now that he knows who she is, the praise she has offered has taken on a far deeper significance in his mind.

"Picking an Einstein-Rosen bridge was a better choice," she agrees. "And yes, I know the public knows the bridge by its more familiar term – wormholes."

"Even that was a reach," he smiles. "Some of your colleagues say that two ends of a wormhole connect different universes, while others opt for different points in the same universe, separated by time and space."

"You certainly did your research, Mr. Castle," she smiles in continued growing admiration. Perhaps she will read some of his other works as well.

"Author," he deadpans. "Research is an occupational hazard."

"That dangerous?" she chuckles.

"You'd be surprised," he concludes, his mind racing to umpteen different dangerous scenarios he and Detective Kate Beckett have encountered, which have served as inspiration. Shaking his head, he begins writing in her book.

"So I make this out to Dr. Windholm, to Sandra, to Mr. Spock?"

"Sandra is fine," she tells him, her smile broadening.

"Ok, I have to admit that I don't know many doctors who don't like being referred to in that terminology," he muses aloud, impressed with her humility.

"Bachelors, masters, Ph.D . . . all those years have to mean something," she chuckles, trying to see what he is writing.

He spends twenty, thirty seconds writing – it seems much longer to those in line who can only hope for the same personalized interaction the good doctor is receiving from their favorite author. He finishes with a conductor-like flourishing signature.

"Can I ask you a question, Dr. Sandra Windholm?" he asks pleasantly, emphasizing her doctoral title. She glances down, reading his note to her and chuckling, her cheeks reddening.

"Certainly," she replies, now looking up at the author again, struggling not to become one of the fawning fans she suspects he is used to.

"So . . . you said I was skirting with the truth," he continues. "What truth is that? Is time travel possible now?"

She turns and walks away, smiling, but turns back a few steps away.

"You're busy, Mr. Castle. I'll stick around here for the next half hour until you finish," she tells him. "I'll be up here next to the window. Some things are better understood shown than discussed."

For the next twenty minutes, Richard Castle is his polite best. He smiles. He laughs. He participates in selfies. He offers small talk and cute jokes. He is authentic, as always, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he is somewhere else. Specifically, some forty feet away at a small table along the window facing the street of this small bookstore. He continues to glance at Dr. Windholm, making sure she hasn't changed her mind and left. This is a conversation he is looking forward to.

It's been an eventful week, the past five or six days. Less than a week ago, their typical case at the precinct turned into anything but. Kate was stranded on a bomb at Archibald Fosse's city apartment. For a while, things looked dire, and then things got serious. Through it all, Castle stayed with his muse and lover, and in the end – both were rewarded for his loyalty.

They are public now, in the most important area – at work, with the seeming blessings of one Captain Victoria Gates.

That jolt of excitement – and relief – has energized their relationship, which has definitely elevated itself in the past few days. Something as simple as being able to hold hands at work has changed their ever-fragile dynamic in a good way. Clearly the universe has smiled on them, finally bestowing its blessings on their relationship.

Speaking of his muse, he glances at the front door, just checking to see if Kate is going to show. They haven't had a case for days, and she had promised to swing by if at all possible.

He brings himself back to the present, and notices that the line is now gone.

"I think that's it, Mr. Castle," Helen tells him. Helen Rollins, the owner of the small establishment, cannot contain her excitement at the number of people who have crowded her store, and the not insignificant revenue the author has just generated for her.

"Always a pleasure, Helen," he tells her, standing and stretching tired and tight muscles that have stagnated over the past two hours. "Let me know when you want to do this again," he offers, as he glances at his watch. It's noon. He takes his cell phone out, as his eyes find Dr. Windholm, still at the table. Smiling, he sends a text to Kate.

CASTLE: Done. But talking with an interesting party. Lunch?

Nodding his head, satisfied, he palms his phone in his hand, and moves toward the good doctor.

"I'm glad you are still here," he begins, as he pulls a chair out to sit across from her, staring out the window. She begins to rise up to meet him.

"No, no, please stay seated," he chides her. "Thanks for sticking around," he tells her as he takes his seat.

"So," she tells him as she glances at her watch. "I have a few minutes, and it sounds like you have questions." Her smile is honest and infectious.

"Just one," he corrects her, and notices her chuckle. "I already asked it."

"That's a difficult question to answer, Mr. Castle," she begins.

"Why do I think this is more of a dodge?" he asks, eyebrows raised playfully.

"Touche," she gives him, with a nod of the head. He's asked the question a half hour ago, and she is confident that she can adequately answer the question to his satisfaction without giving away confidential and proprietary trade secrets.

"You asked if time travel is possible," she begins. "It's not quite as simple as you think, even though you were very, very close," she reminds him. "But first – let me ask you a question. Why is this answer so important to you? I mean, you've already written the book, and it's a very plausible scenario you painted very eloquently. What is driving this thirst for more knowledge?"

"Writer's curiosity," he tells her, but the rising inflection of his voice tells her it is more a question than a statement. She replies with raised eyebrows of her own.

"Okay, cards on the table," he tells her, running a hand through his hair. He struggles for words, starting and stopping over the next few seconds.

"Okay, okay," she finally acquiesces. "You have your own reasons, I'm sure. Let me answer your question. Time travel is possible. But not the way you are thinking about it."

His eyes widening, he leans in closer as if to will her to speak faster.

"How so?" he asks, his voice low.

"It isn't really time travel. The more accurate term is traveling through wormholes. Wormholes can be used as ramps to other timelines."

"Hey Doc," he smiles. "That sounds an awful lot like time travel to me."

"It sounds like it, I admit," she replies. "But there is no such thing as a time traveling ship. There is no object you buckle yourself into, and take off. No fanned chariot, no phone booth," she chuckles, drawing a reciprocal chuckle from Castle at her knowledge of pop culture.

"There is no time-traveling container. You don't actually go anywhere. Instead, you are literally broken down into digital data elements, and that is what is sent through the wormhole. Not you. Once that data gets to the other side, then you are rebuilt."

"Wha . . . What?" he asks incredulously, his head leaning back and eyes continuing to widen to almost comical levels.

"It isn't you that travels through time, Mr. Castle," she tells him. "It is a digital representation of you."

She takes out her small notebook that is never far away from her, and opens to a blank page toward the back of the notepad. She draws two circles, one of either side of the page.

"Think of a cell phone call, or a fax machine transmission," she tells him, as she begins to fill in the space along a straight line between the two circles with ones and zeroes, depicting a digital transmission.

"There is so much we absolutely take for granted today that, if you actually slow down and stop for a minute to consider what is really happening . . ." she says, her words dying off as she shakes her head.

"If you told someone in 1940 or 1950, if you told someone that they would be able to talk into a small, untethered device that sends your voice – or even a video of your face – across the air to another recipient device . . . well they'd tell you that you've been watching too much Dick Tracy."

Both laugh at the analogy, recalling the old science fiction cartoon serial from newspapers.

"Yet today, we take such fantasy for granted. Think about it for a moment, Mr. Castle," she continues. "Today, we can take your voice, your face, your surroundings, and digitize them – turn them into ones and zeroes – and send them through thin air, to a tower or into space itself and re-route them to another destination. And this all occurs so fast, so rapidly that to the human senses, it appears to be instantaneous. But that's not all, Mr. Castle."

She glances out the window, upward to the skies as she smiles.

"All of those ones and zeroes don't arrive back on the other end in the same sequence that they left. So the technology not only takes your voice and breaks it down into ones and zeroes and sends it off into space, it has to re-sequence all those ones and zeroes back into their original order, and then convert them back into analog waves that your ears hear and your brain understands. And all of this occurs within infinitesimal amounts of time so that it appears that there is absolutely no delay at all."

He nods his head appreciatively.

"You know, I have to admit that I've never really thought about it that way," he muses aloud.

"And more, when it arrives to your ears, it sounds exactly like the person's voice," she continues. "For a typical phone conversation, what was once your voice has been torn down into nothing more than millions of numbers, sent into outer space, and then rebuilt on my device – and it sounds exactly like your voice. Exactly! It's almost miraculous. Today we call this science. Sixty years ago, this was the stuff of pure science fiction."

She allows Castle a few additional seconds to process what she has just said, before she drops the hammer.

A cell phone doesn't send your voice to another person, Mr. Castle. It sends a digital representation of your voice to that other person. It is a copy of your voice."

"My God," he exclaims in a whisper, as the concept she is sharing with him finally takes shape in his mind.

"Time travel is possible, Mr. Castle," she tells him, now leaning back in her seat, smiling. "We have prototypes. We have done it. But it isn't you that goes to a specific destination in the past. It is a copy of you. We tear you down, and send a copy of you."

"Like a phone call," he comments, his voice shaking, still a whisper.

"More like a fax machine, actually," she corrects, "but now you have the concept."

She draws his attention back to her notebook, as she cleanly rips the page out of the book. She points to the two circles and the line of ones and zeroes between them.

"We turn you into digital data," she tells him, and then bends the paper in half, so that the circles are almost touching.

"The wormhole brings the two points closer together, shortening the distance between the two points significantly," she tells him. Then, with a smile that breaks into a sweet chuckle of laughter, she signs her name – title included – to the edge of the paper and hands it to him. He glances down at the autographed diagram, knowing this is something he will keep forever. His eyes are drawn to her name.

Dr. Sandra Windholm, CEO, Kronologix

"And that, Mr. Castle, is time travel," she tells him as she watches him fold the paper and put it into his wallet for safekeeping.

"Feel free to reach out to me if you want to learn more," she tells him, and then she stands, drops her business card on the table, and gives him a final smile and walks to the front door of the bookstore, offers a wave, and is gone.

For a moment, Richard Castle sits, stunned – his mind racing about with possibilities. Because he is a writer, his mind often lives in a fictional world. All too often, that fictional world collides with reality. As a writer, he bounces many ideas off Kate Beckett, often when she doesn't realize he is considering plot options and developments. But one topic they have often discussed – especially in the past few months as he finished this most recent book – has been the idea of time travel. They laugh about it, they joke about it, and she is far from a believer that it is even remotely possible. But they both know exactly what they would do, what event they would move heaven and hell to change, if they had the impossible chance to change the past.

Unbeknownst to Dr. Sandra Windholm, she has opened a can of worms – no pun intended – that will not be easily closed.

Another minute passes before he stands himself, his fingers excitedly racing across his cell phone, typing a frantic message to Kate Beckett.