A short one, this time... but it felt like a stand-alone chapter. More as it comes to me, and thank you for reading. =)

36

Inside of Pod 4, less than an hour later-

John Tracy crouched on the heaving steel deck, in front of potential disaster. Like a lot of Brains' wilder inventions, that temporal comm had some issues. Theory was sound, but the devil lay coiled up in the details, ready to foment destruction. Dragged away from the rescue effort, John had consulted Brains over holo-net. Wound up with a definite feel for the projector's operational safety parameters, or… y'know, lack thereof.

See, blasting a stream of ultra-high energy tachyons straight through a test subject, aiming to send his image and consciousness back to a definite point in time, struck him as…

Potentially lethal, and

Very unlikely to work.

...but anything beat hauling corpses out of the mud. Scott and Gordon were out there still, hunting as hard as they could for survivors. Kayo had joined forces with the Navy crew, bringing in victims for treatment. John should have been right there beside them, but Brains needed someone in place to program and run that buzzing and sparking projector.

Took the astronaut about fifteen minutes to get the d*mn thing put together, ignoring the chaos of noise and despair all around him. Chancellor McGill hovered close the whole time, white-faced but calm.

"Will it work?" she asked, once the device was unpacked and assembled; its anti-proton powerpack slotted in. Virgil was standing by, too, having volunteered as first messenger. Brains' image floated alongside, rippling like wind-blown silk, when dust sifted into the pod. John looked up from his work, one gloved hand on the lens array. Didn't snap,

'Your guess is as good as mine,'

Or…

'How the h*ll should I know?'

Just shrugged, saying,

"If it does, we won't be here to test it. We'll split off another whole universe. One where the city's evacuated on time, and none of this ever happened."

Not the response the chancellor was looking for, judging by her facial contortions, and Virgil's quick intervention. Whatever. John turned away and got back to work, letting his brother soothe the concerned politician. He had more than enough on his plate, already.

There was a spatial component to the beam's target. In 3.6 hours, the Earth had turned, had slipped a bit further around the sun and galactic rim, while Venice tilted along with the spinning planet. All of this had to be accounted for, as there was no use having Virgil deliver his warning to empty space.

"Where were you this morning, Chancellor?" asked John, glancing upward once more.

"On the steps, having pictures taken," she told him, absently patting her pockets for a smartphone she'd lost in the flood. "We posed right in front of the Cultural Centre."

"Basilica di San Marco," murmured the astronaut, seeing in his mind's eye soaring arches and domes, once capped with glittering crosses and marble saints. Then, when no one else got it, "The Unity Building."

Careena McGill nodded, yes.

"Right in front of the doors, facing the plaza," she added. "At… it had to be 9:30 this morning."

"How close can you put me?" asked Virgil, stepping aside for a hurrying medic. John sat back on his heels, then rose to his feet in one smooth, easy motion. Standing, he was taller than Virgil, but leaner. Very much not as broad.

Anyhow, people didn't always want the truth. They wanted to feel good… but the astronaut figured his brother was different.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I'll get you as close in time and space as I can, but you'll have to be quick and have that speech memorized. You'll be trying to warn the Chancellor about something that hasn't yet happened, so it's probably going to be tough to recall."

Virgil looked around them for a moment, feeling the roll and heave of Pod 4; smelling mud and dust and disinfectant; hearing crashes and shouts and loud, wailing sirens.

"Pretty sure I'll remember this, John," was all that he said in reply.

"Y- You may experience a bit of, ah… of d- disorientation," Brains interjected, unhelpfully. "The t- tachyon beam may c- cause some f- frontal lobe damage. It h- has, ah… has n- never been tested in the f- field… but performs r- reasonably well in simulation."

John cocked a coppery eyebrow, thinking: Sell it, Buddy. Aloud, he said,

"Yeah. Any adverse effects should disappear once the situation un-happens. Like I stated before, early evac means none of this takes place, or we've created a brand new reality. Ready?"

Virgil nodded.

"Yup. Fire away, Rocket-jock."

Squaring his shoulders, the pilot stepped up to the line John had marked on the deck, right at the projector's focal length. GDF personnel cleared everyone else from the beam path, just in case.

Meant to be set on a lab table, the device was less than waist-high. Looked more like a gun than a beam-thrower, but he might've been paranoid. At any rate, John had to drop to one knee to aim and operate the thing, pausing a moment to look at his brother.

'You're sure?' his gaze asked, without speaking.

'H*ll, yeah,' said Virgil's tense nod.

And then, John pulled the trigger.