A Glitch in Time
by Gary D. Snyder
Chapter 10:
While Kim awaited a change – any change – in her circumstances, Cindy and Ron were in the Strato XL several hundred miles northwest of her position on a mission to do just that. As before Cindy was operating the controls while was Ron sitting quietly, seeming deep in thought. "Are you sure we're heading the right way?" Cindy asked.
Ron roused himself. "According to Cyber Wade we are." The Kim-mando suit, as Ron called it, contained a microphone pick-up and set of earphones in the hood over which Ron could communicate with Wade's contingency program. "The GPS tracking pinpoints the Kim-municator as being – what's the distance now?"
"Five hundred thirty-seven point six three two kilometers," Wade's voice answered promptly.
Ron grunted impatiently. "In miles?"
"Now three hundred thirty-three point eight nine five miles," the voice replied after a slight pause.
"About three hundred and thirty miles," Ron told Cindy. "At this rate we should be there in about half an hour. After that, we should find Kim and Jimmy and find out what's going on."
"Assuming that the Kim-municator is still with the Kim, and that Kim is still with Jimmy, and that -"
"They're still together," Ron answered, just a little too quickly. "I mean, why wouldn't they be? Okay, sure, I can't prove it, and I don't know what all is going on, but…but…well, they're still together. We'll find them." His voice became quiet, almost sulky. "We'll find them."
"I hope so." Cindy looked at Ron with some skepticism. Despite Ron's demonstration in his bedroom not long before she still harbored some doubts as to whether he could deal with whatever situation Jimmy and Kim into which they had gotten themselves. If Kim wasn't able to handle it, then what chance did Ron, borrowing her abilities, have? As far as Jimmy was concerned –
A blinding headache suddenly hit her and she instinctively grabbed her head as she squinted from the pain. Her vision blurred for an instant and when it cleared again she saw that Ron and the hovercraft had disappeared and that she was standing on a driveway with Libby and Jimmy's father and a smoothie in her hand. "Please, Mr. Neutron!" she heard Libby say, "You're giving us massive brain freeze!"
What in the name of –? Cindy wondered, but before she could complete the thought her headache vanished and she was back in the Strato XL. Looking back she saw Ron sitting as before, but with a decidedly odd expression on his face. "What happened?" she asked aloud, as much to herself as to Ron.
"Totally weird," Ron answered. "For a moment I could have sworn I was back home at Bueno Nacho talking with Kim and Monique, but that was months ago. Kind of like déjà vu, but in reverse."
Rufus nodded. "Me too," he chirped.
"You mean like a flashback?" Cindy nodded. "I had one, too." She looked worried. "That is pretty weird. And the three of us having flashbacks at the same time when Kim, Wade, and Neutron are missing seems a little too coincidental for me. But what do you think it means?"
Ron shook his head. "I have no idea. But Cyber Wade might." Raising his voice slightly he asked, "Cyber Wade! What could happen to make Cindy, Rufus, and I experience simultaneous flashbacks?"
"I'm sorry," the familiar voice replied, "but I'm only a simulation and my programmed responses are rather limited. I'm afraid I can't respond to that question."
"Okay, then, did anything weird happen in the past two minutes?"
"Checking." After a few seconds Cyber Wade answered, "Affirmative. System logs show a temporal discontinuity of approximately seven point three seconds."
"A temporal discontinuity? What's that?"
"A temporal discontinuity is a disruption in the timestream that creates a break or gap in the normal sequence of events, due either to the absence of required events or the intercalation of extraneous events."
Ron repeated this to Cindy, who frowned. "What caused it? Why did it happen at all?"
When asked, Cyber Wade replied, "I'm sorry. I'm only a simulation and my programmed responses are rather limited. I'm afraid I can't respond to that question."
"Great," Cindy muttered when Ron shook his head to her, indicating the reply. "More questions for Wade or Neutron to answer when we find them. Maybe we should start making a list."
The temporal discontinuity had affected not only the rocket's passengers but everyone everywhere, including those in Drakken's lair. Shego burst into the lab where Drakken and two guards were watching Jimmy suspiciously. "What was that?" she demanded.
"Don't ask me," Drakken said defensively. He pointed at Jimmy. "He's the smart one, remember?"
Shego fixed Jimmy with a cold stare. "Well, Poindexter? Trying something cute with that time-thing to rescue Possible?"
Prisoner or not, Jimmy did not suffer fools gladly. He stalked over to Shego and planted himself in front of her, his fists on his hips. "Okay, first of all, my name is not Poindexter. Second, I haven't even had time to start working on the temporal complosion device. Third, if I were to try something, I'd come up with something a lot more effective than what just happened. And fourth, this is exactly what I warned you people about. So zip it!"
It wasn't often that people spoke back to Shego, and the guards and Drakken backed away with small "oohs" of foreboding. Shego gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, but seemed uncertain what to do. On one hand, she had her reputation to think about and letting this go unanswered would severely damage her carefully cultivated image of ruthless efficiency. On the other, it was true that the Possible girl and the kid had warned them about some serious time issues and consequences. Furthermore, Drakken clearly needed the kid to finish whatever plan he had in mind. She decided to use the last item as a means of extricating herself from the situation.
"You're just lucky that Drakken needs you," she snarled. "If he didn't, you'd be so much charcoal right now."
"Now, or in a day or two," Neutron shrugged, returning back to the workbench. "Does it really matter that much when we all go?"
That seemed to tweak Drakken. "What are you talking about?"
Jimmy swung on Drakken now. "Don't you get it even now?" he raged. "We just experienced the first temporal interphase. A slice of the past has just passed through our time on its way to being sucked into the singularity, and it won't be long before we experience more. The structure of time itself will eventually destabilize, we'll be sucked into the singularity, and that will be the end of everything!" Jimmy's voice had increased in volume and intensity to a piercing crescendo, and he stood shaking with rage and frustration after he had finished.
Drakken simply stood there, unimpressed, but Shego was no longer as certain of things as she had been. Both her flashback and Jimmy's passionate outburst had impressed her and common sense told her that it was Jimmy, rather than Drakken, who knew more about temporal anomalies. "Maybe we should listen to him, Doc," she suggested.
"Nonsense, Shego," Drakken assured her. "Coincidence, that's all it is. If we really are in such imminent danger, why didn't Possible just go the authorities and tell them what was happening?"
"If she knew then what she knows now she probably would have acted differently," Jimmy retorted bitterly. "But she figured that the authorities weren't any smarter than you."
The insult went completely over Drakken's head. "Thank you."
"Even so -" Shego argued.
"The matter is closed," Drakken announced. "Everyone get back to work." He glared at the guards, who were idling to one side. "Especially you two. Who said you could stop in the first place? And spit out that gum."
Jimmy returned to the temporal complosion device, seething inwardly. How, he asked himself, could any like Drakken call themselves a genius when they couldn't see the obvious? As he dwelt on it the irony of the situation came through to him. He was working on a device that gave the user mastery of time, when all the while he was running out of time. The thought of sabotaging the device had occurred to him, but he needed the device intact and damaging it would seal everyone's fate. If he could only be alone with it for five minutes he could use it to neutralize the singularity, but Drakken and the guards were watching him closely every second. For now all he could do was bide his time, but he had decided that, if time ran out, he would attempt to neutralize the singularity regardless of the possible consequences to himself.
Shego had moved next to Drakken, who was intently monitoring Jimmy's progress on the device. "So, why?" she asked.
"Why what?"
"Why is this gizmo so important, anyway? Time travel, that sort of thing."
Drakken snorted. "You surprise me, Shego. You really can't see the unlimited criminal potential for time travel?"
"Actually, no. I mean, what's done is done, and what will be, will be, right? Or so that old song says. So you find a way to go into the past and see what happened or into the future and see what will happen. That can't be of any use now."
Drakken chuckled humorlessly, never taking his eyes off what Jimmy was doing. As well as making sure the boy didn't try anything, it allowed him to familiarize himself with the device. "That's the operative word, Shego. Now. Suppose you go 100 years into the past with modern criminal tools and techniques and rob every bank in New York City. How can they prosecute you for a crime when the statute of limitations ran out seventy-five years ago? Or suppose you go into the future 100 years from now and do the same thing. How can they possibly arrest you for a crime that hasn't even happened yet?"
Shego had to admit that Drakken's arguments had at least a semblance of logic to them, which was more than most of his other schemes had to offer. Both of them were surprised by a derisive laugh from Jimmy. "You're living in a fool's paradise, Drakken," he sneered.
"That's Dr. Drakken, to you," Drakken shot back. "And what are you talking about?"
"Did it ever occur to you that you can't steal things from the past and bring them into the future?" Seeing Drakken's annoyed yet suspicious look, Jimmy went on. "No? Well, think about it. A fundamental law of the Universe is that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. If you try to take something out of the past and bring it into the present, you've violated that law."
"So? We're criminals. That's what we do."
"That's not what I'm talking about. Suppose you go back to the day before yesterday and bring a dollar bill back to today. That means that the dollar vanishes the day before yesterday, doesn't exist yesterday, and suddenly becomes two today and for the rest of eternity. It's the Billionaire's Paradox. If your scheme could work someone could go one day into the past, take $1000 out of one account, bring it back to the present, and deposit it into another account so that they would be $1000 richer. Then they could two days into the past and do the same thing, then three days, and so forth, until they had all the money they wanted."
Drakken looked intrigued. "That actually sounds good to me."
"But it can't work. By taking the money out of the past, they've effectively destroyed matter. By bringing it into the present they've effectively created matter. That violates the fundamental law of matter and energy. And think about this second paradox. If they take withdrew money from the account on May 1st, how could they have that money to withdraw on May 2nd?"
"Because they took the money on May 2nd before they took it out on May 1st," Drakken spluttered.
Jimmy shook his head. "Only from the point of view of the subjective present. In absolute terms, the events of May 1st still occur before May 2nd."
"Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants," Drakken challenged Jimmy. "If you can't take things from one point in time to another, how can people travel through time at all? Why doesn't that create a paradox?"
"It does. In effect everything – everything – becomes indeterminate from the moment someone arrives in the past on forward until the traveler returns to the time from which he initially came. You literally decide the fate of the Universe and determine the course of history as long as you exist in your past. That's why time travel is so dangerous. Any change, any change at all, could destroy the world as it once was. You leave a peanut butter sandwich on a counter in the past, and when you return the world might be ruled by cockroaches."
"Hmm. That actually sounds like the sort of thing I'd want," Drakken mused, "except for the cockroaches." He pulled out a notebook and scratched a line through something written there. "So much for bringing a sack lunch when I go into the past"
Jimmy pounded his head. "Has any of this sunk in at all?" he pleaded.
"Hold on, kid," Shego said. "What kind of changes could totally mess up history?"
Jimmy thought about it. "It depends on how far back you go. Chaos theory states that time amplifies the perturbing effects of personal actions. Going back one day into the past and eating an apple might have no discernable impact at all. But eating an apple one hundred years ago…" He shrugged. "Who can say?"
"Okay, maybe going into the past has some minor problems," Drakken admitted. "But what about the future? How can that mess up the present?"
"It can't..."
Drakken pointed a triumphant finger at Jimmy. "Aha!"
"…but only because you can't go into the future," he concluded. "The future doesn't exist yet. You can't go someplace that doesn't exist."
Drakken's jaw dropped. "Huh?"
"What about this black hole thingie that you've been talking about?" asked Shego. "I thought you said that it was somewhere in the future."
"It is. But it doesn't exist yet. If it did, we'd already be in it. But it's something we will end up in if we don't do something about it now." Jimmy struggled to put it into terms that would get his point across. "Those green energy bolts you shoot. Do you ever miss?"
"Puh-lease," Shego drawled.
"Okay. When you shoot, you haven't hit anything yet. But you know that it will. When you point and blast, you know that you'll hit what you aimed for because the laws of motion let you predict where your energy beam will hit. It's the same with time. Right now there are events in motion that will inevitably lead to a disaster if we don't change what's going to happen."
Drakken had apparently had enough. "Forget about it, Shego. It's all double-talk to confuse us and trick us into letting him and the girl go."
"It's not a trick!" Jimmy insisted with fervor. "Everything I've said is true. You have to let me use this device to neutralize the anomaly! It's our only hope!"
A bell cut short Drakken's rejoinder and he scowled as the guards looked at their watches. "Shift's over," he grudgingly admitted. "You'll have to finish up whatever it is that you're doing tomorrow. There's no way I'm paying for overtime guard duty while you tinker with that thing."
"There may not be a tomorrow!" Jimmy protested, but in vain. The guards and Shego flanked him and shepherded him back towards the cell in which Kim was still waiting. As he marched along Jimmy fumed, frustrated by Drakken's inability to see the obvious. The guards affixed the restraints to his wrists and ankles and departed, leaving Kim and Jimmy alone with Drakken. Shego regarded them silently for some time before she finally broke the silence.
"What's the sitch, Kimmie?"
Kim merely glared at her. "Let me down and I'll show you."
"Hey, I'm just trying to be sociable here." Shego positioned herself in front of Kim and cocked her head to one side. "Seriously, is what the kid here says on the level?"
"Always has been," Kim retorted.
"And we could all be sucked into some kind of black hole unless he manages to get that doohickey working and fixes things?" At Kim's wordless nod Shego began to pace back and forth, deep in thought, while Jimmy and Kim looked on. Technically Drakken was her employer, but more than a paycheck had kept Shego with him through one failed plan after another. On the other hand, Jimmy and Kim's stories were consistent and the boy genius had convinced her that he apparently understood time theory far better than Drakken and that, by inference, he better understood the dangerous forces with which Drakken intended to meddle. Finally Shego stopped. "I never thought I'd be saying this," she sighed, "but it looks like Drakken's crossed the line this time."
"Say what?" Jimmy asked in astonishment.
"I said, move over." Shego turned to confront Jimmy with an expression that Jimmy couldn't quite decipher. "You and Kimmie have just got a new team member."
End of Chapter 10