Chapter 20
The Butterfly Effect
"I have to say, your call surprised me."
"Don't worry, it surprised me too."
Erika looked him up and down for a moment, the slightest impression of irony touching her features.
"But after all, we are partners now. It seemed unwise to keep you at arms' length forever. I thought it was high time you see who you've really gotten into bed with."
"I appreciate the invitation."
Simon smiled, then allowed his attention to be drawn away again. They were wandering through a hallway that seemed to span the length of the whole facility, gradually sloping around until it performed a complete circle and ended up back where it had started. The facility was entirely underground, but one wouldn't have know it. Everywhere they went, the modern environment basked in the glow of what could easily be mistaken for natural light. Several concave windows pressed into the walls even simulated the view of the outdoors, though, Simon smiled a little to himself, it would be nice if they all carried the same channel. It gave one a sort of scenic whiplash to be looking out at a sandy shoreline one moment and a woody expanse the next. He turned back to his host as they passed another wide display.
"However, I must admit, I expected the legendary Guild of Scientists to be far more innovative and far less .. ordinary. This is nothing I haven't seen a million times in other labs."
"Flashy technology is not always progress." Erika replied, taking on a tone of gentle chastisement. "Our scientists don't need floating sneakers and 4D headsets in order to work effectively. In fact, those things are more of a distraction. Our studies have long proven that the best environment for scientific development is a simple, clean, and non-chaotic one. Any experiments that might trigger disturbances take place far beneath our feet."
Simon ran a finger along a nearby wall, inspecting it as though he was the director of a fine hotel. Not a speck of dust to be seen. Erika watched him, concealing her twinge of irritation with years of practice.
"Everything in order, I presume?"
"There are a lot less people here than I expected." Simon commented, glancing around once more. Erika stifled another flare of annoyance. The man was in the middle of one of the most integral laboratories in world history and he almost seemed bored.
"Well, the Guild is more of a network of people all over the globe. But this is base of operations." She said, her voice laced with pride. "Right here under Chicago. People travel from all over the world to meet here."
"Impressive."
Was he mocking her now? She focused on the hall ahead, her pointed gaze boring lasers into anyone who happened to step across it. Her next words possessed a slightly darker undertone.
"You don't know the half of it."
"The Probe was designed here?"
She looked at him sharply, but his face showed only mild curiosity. The question seemed innocent enough. Still ..
She smiled politely.
"As a matter of fact, it was. We supply a lot of the government's more vital and complex pieces."
Simon nodded slowly, staring around with interest, noting a few wary looks as scientists passed by. Some expressions were outright hostile, and most, he realized, weren't directed at him.
"Your colleagues don't seem too happy about the recent change in leadership."
"They'll get used to it." Erika returned mildly. "This sort of thing happens from time to time. We readjust."
Simon felt obliged to offer her a smile in response, though behind it, his mind was now whirring at double the speed. 'This sort of thing happens.' Why? How often did it happen? Was this what the Guild was like? Did they just go around plotting to overthrow one another at every turn? Being the leader of such an organisation was evidently a perilous occupation ..
"So I hear you've been conducting tests on the Probe in the middle of the night. They appear to have been quite successful."
The statement was made in the same politely curious tone of voice, but the woman beside him turned to him in shock.
"Wh-" She immediately recovered herself, but the moment of surprise was enough to satisfy Simon's suspicions. Erika folded her hands together in front of her - a gesture he was beginning to recognise. It appeared to be one of her favourite defense mechanisms.
"That's correct, of course." She allowed graciously. "But it's also supposed to be one of the Guild's closely guarded secrets. How did you find out about it, if you don't mind my asking? Kensinge, I suppose. She'd do well to remember she swore an oath."
"Actually, I've been going through some recent files." He inserted the explanation smoothly, though his eyes flickered with something cold at the mention of Kensinge's name. "You'd be surprised. The Administrator liked to keep detailed records."
"The Ad-" Erika abruptly stopped walking, watching him warily. "The Administrator was in charge of the government military sector. He couldn't have known about the Probe tests. They were strictly Guild intelligence."
Simon shrugged a little.
"It would seem he knew more than he let on. There are plenty of interesting reports stashed away in that building, some of them are from decades ago. If you'd like, seeing as we're partners now, you may go through them yourself. I have nothing to hide, after all."
".. yes." Erika ventured noncommittally, then, seeming to shrug the whole thing off, she continued. "Well, I suppose there's no harm done. You would have found out about it eventually, seeing as our divisions are merged now. My information is yours and yours is mine. No secrets."
"Agreed." Simon assented, his usual obliging manner back in place.
"In the interest of full disclosure .." Erika went on lightly, though he thought he sensed a different edge to her voice now. ".. that Dr. Kensinge woman. I assume you have plans for her."
"Plans?" Simon raised his eyebrows a little. "What plans could you mean?"
"Well, she's hardly doing the job she was assigned." Erika remarked bluntly. "The Probe is still in Terra Nova. Jim Shannon hasn't surrendered the colony. In fact, she appears to have lost track of him completely. For all their drilling and excavation, they still haven't found hide nor hair of the burial site."
"Burial site?" Simon questioned blithely, causing his host to turn back to him with a trace of marked impatience. Just how air-headed was this new partner of hers?
"I had them include you in a memo that went out yesterday. Don't you read your alerts?"
"Oh, yes, that." He smiled a little. "That was ominous. Can't say as I understood much of it, though it sounded to me like you had your people out chasing the ghosts of wild geese."
She threw him a withering look - an expression, Simon chuckled to himself, which reeked of superiority in the highest order.
"No, I don't suppose it would have made much sense removed from context, especially to someone with no background knowledge of the situation." She waved a hand dismissively. "Suffice it to say, Kensinge has been tasked with the job of locating and securing a site which holds great significance for us - the Guild, that is. And so far, she has failed tremendously."
"Well, if I know Heather Kensinge, I'm sure she's working on it." Simon reasoned. "If it isn't there, it isn't there."
"It's there." His companion murmured immediately. "And if it contains what I believe it does, then we should be going to any lengths necessary to procure it."
Simon shrugged a little.
"If you say so."
She seemed strangely pleased with the careless response. She folded her arms, rubbing a long-nailed hand across a speck of dust on the elbow of her eggplant-coloured suit.
"Believe it or not, if they had the Probe, they could use it to search the area within a matter of hours." She muttered. "If only they'd gone about things in the order I suggested .."
"But the Probe can't be used that way." Simon retorted, sounding a little more overconfident than he should have.
"Au contraire." She glanced at him, the corners of her mouth twitching. "I shouldn't really be letting you in on this, but in the interest of our new partnership, I will anyway. After all, we make our own rules now, do we not?"
She stopped walking again, turning to face him solemnly.
"The Probe most certainly can be used that way. And it will be. In fact, it would have been already, if that woman had done her job .."
She eyed the man across from her with a hint of remorse in her features.
"Simon, I know very well she's a friend of yours, but now she works for both of us. She's been given too much free reign, you know that."
Simon sighed, but said nothing as he met her gaze. After all, he couldn't disagree with the statement. She was right.
"Very well, I see your point." He relented eventually. "And believe it or not, I do have a plan."
She eyed him with some doubt.
".. you do?"
"I do." Simon repeated. "I'm putting together a small team of elite hunters, the best the underground has to offer."
The woman blinked at him.
"Forgive me if I have trouble taking you seriously." She remarked dryly. Simon ignored this and continued.
"The leader of the squadron has been briefed according to the situation. He's to go in and take leadership of the Base. Kensinge's too valuable an asset to lose entirely, but you're right in saying that she's no leader. She's only served to prove that by her most recent actions. She'll be placed under house arrest until she can produce the results she's been promising. In the meantime, Parker and his team will go into the colony and take the Probe back covertly."
Erika raised an eyebrow.
"I hear it's easier said than done."
"He assures me it will be quite simple." Simon murmured.
Erika stared at him in surprise, a faint look of approval lighting up her features.
"Very good, Simon. I'm pleased you've come to see things reasonably of your own accord."
Simon didn't answer. Evidently the woman considered herself the head of this new partnership. Very well, that worked for him.
"There is one other thing .." He ventured slowly. Erika raised an eyebrow.
"What is it?"
"This would all be a lot more efficient if you shared your entire role in this with me. Tell me everything Kensinge knows about the Guild, including what she's been sent to Terra Nova to find. The main reason this whole campaign has taken so horrendously long is that our two sides have been jarring at every turn, unwilling to work together to achieve their goals. That stops now. Do you agree?"
Erika hesitated for a few moments, watching him with a small smile. Finally she nodded, holding a long hand out to him.
"You know something, Simon, there may just be hope for you yet."
"It fills me with uncontainable relief to hear you say so." He responded, taking the hand and shaking it firmly with a smile of his own. As he did so, he found a smaller man at his shoulder. Releasing Erika's grip, he instead followed her gaze back to the man, somewhat alarmed by the look of hunger that had entered her eyes. The man, who appeared to be a minor lab assistant, wrung his hands as he began to speak, then clammed up as he threw a suspicious glance in Simon's direction. Erika followed his gaze this time, shaking a hand impatiently as she did so.
"Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of him. Get on with it."
The assistant's announcement came out - a waterfall of empty information. He conveyed much but said little. When he had gone, Simon turned a slightly amused glance on Erika.
"Chatty little fellow, isn't he?"
She met his eyes with a long-suffering look before continuing her progress down the hall once more, gesturing for Simon to follow. He fell in step with her.
"What was he saying about Snakehead? It's the river directly beside the Terra Novan colony, isn't it? Why are you so interested in it?"
She thought a moment before answering.
"The Guild has been around for generations. Many more years than most people think. We are before and after time itself. You just asked me why we're so interested in the river near Terra Nova." Her almond-shaped eyes flickered a challenge as she met his. "You asked the wrong question. We aren't interested in the river at all. Try again, this time without making assumptions."
Simon watched her in surprise for a few seconds as realization slowly dawned.
".. it's not the river you care about. It's the mountain, isn't it? Why?"
She tilted her head a little, the gesture something between a nod and a shake.
"Let's just say .. it contains a section of our history .. and a piece of our future."
"How cryptic." Simon murmured.
"Quite." Erika assented. "But not for nothing. Anything that involves the future is a sensitive business."
He stopped walking abruptly, staring at her.
"Your people have built a time machine! Or .. you're going to build a time machine?"
She studied him for a moment, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth as he waited in suspense.
".. no." She finally answered. "That would be impossible."
"So? People achieve the impossible every day."
She eyed him, still with the same calculating smile.
"Touché." The smile widened temporarily, then disappeared as though it had never existed. "Very well, if you insist on knowing, I shall give you the basics. This isn't necessary, you understand, nor is it common practice, but in the interest of our mutual agreement, I shall make an exception."
"I'm touched." Simon commented, then waited. Erika picked up her cue.
"I was telling you the truth earlier. No time machine built by human hands has ever existed, either before us or after. There is no technologically-advanced tin can capable of rocketing through space and time. The concept is absurd, to say the least." The frown left her face again then and she smiled again. "Sorry to ruin any boyhood dreams you might be holding on to. But it's the truth."
"Then .."
"What we do have .. are fractures." She wandered away, giving him little choice but to follow along beside her. "Have you ever heard the phrase 'life imitates art'? So it is with humans. 'Man imitates nature'. Once, we would never have dreamed up the means to create rips in time capable of transporting us to another parallel earth .. but here we are. We discover something, we replicate it. Humans never truly think up anything original for ourselves. We borrow concepts from plants, animals, anything we can make use of. Humans are ingenious plagiarists. Nothing new under the sun, isn't that what they say?"
"Are you saying you've discovered a fracture that can take you to the future?"
"Patience." Erika raised a long-nailed hand and touched the sensitive coating of his prosthetic arm, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "You're jumping ahead of yourself again. You never did outgrow those childhood fantasies, did you, Simon? I can see the hope shining out of you this instant. You almost can't stand still for the excitement of it."
Simon smiled dryly back at her.
"You can make fun of me, or you can finish your tale. If this goes on for much longer, I'll have to buy you lunch."
"I'd like that." She flashed him a quick grin, then picked up her business-like manner once more. "As I was saying, no human would ever have dreamed of the possibility of time fractures, much less have put all of the intricate pieces together in such a way as to create one. The odds of such a success are astronomically large. However, if there's one thing we do well, it's discover. The Guild are always looking, always searching, always finding. When we located the first fracture, we were astounded. But it didn't take long for us to get to work. Now, we have the ability to create fractures ourselves. Artificial ones, with the Probe."
"But you don't have the Probe." Simon interjected. "Isn't that the whole point?"
".. yes." Erika murmured, eyeing him. "One for you. But the Probe plans are still within reach. Just not ours."
"I thought someone ran off with them."
"That is the story, yes, and technically, it is the truth. The actual running off, however, was orchestrated down to the finest detail. Only a select few were privy to it. We do it quite often, actually." She waved a hand as though the statement was an obvious one. "It's the safest way to preserve priceless information. Only a fool keeps all of their possessions in one box."
Simon was silent as she paused, seemingly deep in thought. She remained quiet for some time, then finally glanced at him, a hint of humour creeping onto her features.
"You're dying to ask, aren't you?"
"Not really." Simon responded airily. Erika laughed, a sharp, musical sound that echoed down the spotless hall ahead of them.
"You are a bad liar, Simon Sarkovovich. But I salute your attempt." She smiled as he watched her, waiting curiously. "You want to know if we can travel to the future. In all honesty, I've already told you the answer."
She was silent again for a moment, then, deciding the joke had run its course, she sighed a little and continued, stopping in the hall to face him. They had almost completed the full circuit, and the segment containing the main entrance was now visible in the distance ahead.
"We can't travel to the future through the fractures. However, we can travel to the past, you see?"
".. not really." Simon admitted, causing his teacher to roll her eyes a little, as though the answer was blatantly simple.
"Really, Simon. Think for a moment. We can travel to the past. Therefore, our future selves can travel to the past, just not the future."
"It's one-way." He murmured, comprehension lighting his face. Erika nodded sharply.
"There you have it."
"If the fractures are naturally-occurring .." He muttered, half to himself. ".. and if they never lead to the future, but always the past .. could two people from different decades - even different centuries - enter the fractures and end up on the same world at the same time?"
"Theoretically, yes." She replied, seeming grateful for an intelligent question. "But let me throw you a bone here. None of the time fractures that we've ever discovered have overlapped and linked back to this earth. They always go to the parallel earth, the Terra Novan earth, as though there is some invisible tie between the two."
"So we can't go back into our own past." He ventured. She nodded in response.
"That would be correct. But we can go to different eras in the other world. Of course .." She smiled a little. ".. one would want to be very careful about which fractures they used. Not all of the naturally-occurring rips would take you to a time after Lucas Taylor discovered how to reverse the portal and get you back home. In fact, the odds of you ever returning would be remote."
"I won't plan any impromptu trips then." Simon retorted. Erika raised an eyebrow.
"A wise decision."
He was silent for a little while, appearing to be thinking very hard about something. Finally, he turned back to her.
"How many fractures have been discovered that are linked to the current time, parallel ones that tie our world now to present-day Terra Nova?"
She smiled at him in amusement.
"Does it matter?"
"I'd say so, yes!" He responded eagerly. "If our future is tied to their future, then we just need to pick the right time to go back - a time when they won't be expecting us. Find a fracture that's delayed a little - say, a year or two ago! Send the whole army in and redo the occupation, knowing what we know now."
"Would that be better?" She questioned. He got the distinct impression she was simply humoring him. "Say we do replay the events before the occupation. Say we go in before Lucas has worked on the fracture. We can't get home. He won't know who we are. He might very well decide not to help us. We're stuck there, forever. What then?"
"But after that!" Simon corrected her impatiently. "We could go in after the Portal has been upgraded."
"Alright .." Erika considered. "Say we somehow manage to time our invasion so that we arrive at the perfect moment. Say we get there, turn up with a large army and take over Terra Nova for good this time. What then?"
"Well .. we'd have it!" Simon exclaimed excitedly. "The Portal wouldn't be blown up. We could have free access in and out of Hope Plaza. We could do whatever we wanted."
"Then what if Lucas had succeeded in killing Commander Taylor and becoming the leader of the colony? Wouldn't that change things?"
"We could imprison him."
"And he might get free." Erika countered. "Or he might get sick and die in prison. Or he might decide to take his revenge and trap us in the past after all, blowing up the Portal and himself with it. We couldn't get home, we'd lose access to the meteoric ore, we'd be in a different position, but the same situation."
"You'd have the Probe." He pointed out.
"True." She assented. "But nowhere to take it and no one who knows how to use it. And even with the artificial fractures we could create, we can't get to the future, remember? And we can't travel back to Terra Nova's past, because the fractures only work from one world to the other. We'd have almost no chance of finding modern-day Chicago. We'd be much more likely to end up millions of years earlier, only in our own world's past this time, not Terra Nova's. A lot of good that would do us."
"But what if Lucas could-"
"Lucas is dead, remember?" She beamed at him, as though the game itself had been a genuine pleasure. "This is the point, Simon. We have no way of knowing if history rights itself. We would risk destroying ourselves, weaving a web of time fragments that might end up trapping us in it. There is no redo button .. not really anyway."
She put a hand on him sympathetically.
"Better to work with what we currently have in front of us. Though I do love contemplating the hypotheticals as much as the next person."
As she began to wander away, Simon called after her.
"Wait! You didn't answer my question."
She turned to him curiously.
"Question?"
"What's in the mountain near Terra Nova? Why are you so interested in the place?"
She returned to him slowly, one foot clicking rhythmically in front of the other. When she deemed herself close enough, she stopped, looking into his face as though she was calculating him, trying to figure out Simon's own personal equation.
"I've given you all the pieces. Our research preservation plan, the fracture current, Terra Nova's mountain .. put them together and complete the puzzle. Do you understand now?"
Simon eyed her blankly as her mouth twitched again. She could practically see the wheels in his mind turning. Finally, his shoulders slumped a little.
"I feel I should understand it .. though I admit, I'm a little fuzzy on the details."
"You disappoint me."
"Then explain it to me."
"No .." Slowly, she shook her head, watching him pitifully, as though in a matter of seconds, he had become a failed experiment. "Time spent explaining the process of photosynthesis to a plant is time wasted. A plant doesn't need to know how it grows, it only needs to be given the tools it requires to get there."
Simon smiled politely.
"You're saying I'm the plant."
"I'll give you the tools you require when you require them." Erika offered. "As well as the information. All you need to do .. is grow."
He met her gaze for a few moments before nodding, turning away to venture down the aisle away from her, back toward the entrance. As he neared it, he called over his shoulder.
"Be seeing you soon, Erika. And I shall try my best not to disappoint you again."
She hadn't moved from her place in the hallway. As his words reached her, she smiled, murmuring her reply in such a low voice that only she could have possibly heard it.
"I'm glad to hear it."
Simon nodded to the security guards as they let him through, turning to catch one last glimpse of the pristine lab as the elevator took him to the surface. No one was around as he replaced his fedora and slipped out the rear exit. Nevertheless, he felt the cold, hard stares of several sets of watching eyes on his back, following him closely until he reached the end of the street and disappeared.
Author's Note
It seems the longer this story goes on, the further I fall behind my intended deadline. ;-; I was supposed to have uploaded these almost 3 weeks ago, but I swear, school holidays just keep getting busier and busier, and this book doesn't get any easier to write the longer it goes on for. XD
Nevertheless, it's very nearly into its third quarter now, so I shall not abandon it. We shall persevere!
Thank you for reading, kind stranger. I hope to see you again soon. ;)
- George DeWhite