Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022
Electric sparks arced over the controls of the observation room as Elsa materialized in the center of the room, almost exactly where she'd disappeared. As before, she reappeared entirely nude, crouched down in exactly the position she'd been in when she left her parents' basement.
Gooshie was waiting for her this time with his tablet computer and sensors already scanning. He made all sorts of excited unintelligible noises, rapidly pushing controls on the computer, lights flashing on the sensor array.
Elsa looked up, a wan smile on her lips. The journey was more familiar to her now. "How long?"
Kristoff's voice echoed from behind her. "About 10 minutes. One minute you were standing in the middle of the room with this-" he handed her the lab coat again, his eyes still covered, "- and then you were gone. How long were you gone this time?"
"About… at least a few hours. I was back in my sister's room when she was little. 7 or 8 years old, I'd guess. But… things were different than I remember. She was a little different, and so was I," she said, sounding puzzled. "Then I spent… I'm not sure, maybe half an hour talking to myself?"
"Doctor Beckett!" Kai practically shrieked. "You can't just go meeting yourself! That- that could have universe-ending consequences! Think of the paradoxes!"
Elsa smirked and rolled her eyes. "Gooshie, we established years ago that time travel, if it existed, would not be like Back to the Future, much as we might want it to be. The Novikov self-consistency principle says history always reverts back to whatever was supposed to happen. Now, I know I haven't been gone for more than about half an hour in this timeline, but I've been awake for almost 20 hours biologically, so… I need a nap. I'll be in the barracks." She began to head for the door when Kristoff blocked her way.
"Elsa… what if you vanish again? You probably shouldn't leave the facility. No, scratch that, you definitely shouldn't leave the facility. Why don't you just camp out on one of the couches in the break room?" He gently guided her towards the access corridor door.
"All right," the blonde scientist sighed. "You're right." She yawned widely. "I hate it when you're right," she jabbed Kristoff in the ribs with a pointed elbow and a warm smile before turning to the other scientists. "I- I'm sorry, everyone. I didn't mean to alarm anyone or make you all get up in the middle of the night."
Kai, Gerda, and Kristoff all nodded and smiled. Kristoff surveyed his motley crew. "We'll talk more in the morning. Get some rest - that goes for everyone."
Elsa wandered into the laboratory break room, which was surprisingly well-appointed for a military facility. Several of the couches were littered with stuff; she picked the couch furthest from the door and tossed Kristoff's guitar onto a different couch, muttering that he must have been born in a stable, before curling up. Her body was exhausted, but her heart was elated. After so many years, to see her sister in any capacity was a dream come true, and she fell asleep with Anna's name on her lips.
Elsa woke to the slightly uncomfortable scene of Kai standing over her, examining her with his ever-present tablet and sensors, his plaid green shirt and suspenders under his lab coat making him look like a confused lumberjack. "Gooshie… what time is it, and why are you hovering?"
"Forgive me, Doctor Beckett! I just wanted to get some more readings. We recalibrated our sensors this morning and the tachyonic field is still strongest with you, but it's suffused the entire facility. The good news is that the particles appear to be decaying at a linear rate-"
Elsa shook the cobwebs off and sat up, wrapping the white laboratory coat around her. Pleasant hazy dreams gave way to the drab iron grey walls of the break room. "So this being yanked through time thing… it's temporary?"
Kai's large head bobbed. "Quite, Doctor. I'm not certain why you haven't vanished again, as it's been some time since the last two intervals, but the tachyonic field will probably be gone in a day or two. Eighty percent of the particles from the experiment remain active now."
Elsa sauntered over to one of the ubiquitous coffee pots and poured a cup into a paper cup. "And it's now covering the facility as well…" she mused, walking into the observation room with Kai trailing her closely, insistently taking readings. She carefully put the coffee cup on the desk and walked into the oscillation chamber, the giant metal ring hanging motionless in the center of the room.
"Doctor Beckett, if I may…"
"Gooshie, I am never going to convince you to call me Elsa, am I?"
Kai laughed, a broad grin on his face. "No, Doctor. It wouldn't be proper."
She chuckled. "I swear, you'd fit right into a medieval castle's staff or something. Anyway, go ahead with what you were going to ask."
"Why did you do what you did? Why did you aim the photonic cannon at the oscillator? It could have killed you."
Elsa sighed, idly rubbing a finger over the tungsten steel ring. "I knew it wouldn't. We thought that quantum displacement would occur downrange by forcing the bosons generated from the oscillator at the beam, but I had a…" she paused, remembering Kristoff's warning, "… an insight that we might see a much larger effect by forcing the beam at the bosons in generation instead."
Kai gaped at the senior scientist. "That… that's BRILLIANT, Doctor! But- did you know it would displace you through time?"
"It was… a possibility," she lied, remembering the day that started this experiment. She was in her laboratory in Oslo a few years ago, studying quantum phenomena in an effort to crack the code on time travel. She'd known the only way she'd ever get to see Anna again would be by jumping across space and time to the past; while quantum theory made changing the past a literal impossibility, she could at least see the past and experience it again, interact with her sister one more time.
Before Anna's lethal accident, she'd had another fight, a bad one. Anna was still in a downward spiral with that moron Hans, and their last interaction had been a harsh one. She'd shouted horrible things in anger, not knowing they'd be the last words she ever said to her sister, and those abrasive, cutting words haunted her ever since.
Anna was her motivation for the last 20 years of study, doggedly researching how she might see her sister one more time, to say the words she couldn't, to say goodbye properly. No one else knew, of course; they simply saw a brilliant scientist tackling some of the most difficult challenges in physics.
The experiment thus far was successful insofar as she found her way back in time, just not to the moment she'd intended. She'd visited Anna at her birth and as a little kid. What next, rebellious pre-teen Anna? That Anna was made miserable by school, particularly math class, and Elsa hadn't been the best sister she could have been, letting Anna struggle on her own.
Elsa reflected on the journey so far. Wonderful though each version was, none was the version of her sister she needed to apologize to.
Kai had asked her something, snapping her back to the present moment. "I- I'm sorry, Gooshie. Say that again please?"
"What just happened, Doctor? My instruments showed a surge of energy around you just a moment ago. Did you feel something?" He tapped his tablet ferociously, analyzing the sensor readings he gathered from around Elsa.
She shook her head. "No, no, I was just daydreaming. Remembering something about my sister…" she paused and looked down, familiar tingling beginning in her fingers again.
The oscillator ring sparkled at her touch, and blue lightning began to arc from it to her body and back. "Gooshie… you might want to step back." A small smile crept onto her face as sparks covered her skin. She knelt down, anticipating what was about to happen.
Kai stepped back a little but held his scanner as close to the electrical chaos as he could, flinching each time a spark got too near him, but doggedly trying to capture the event.
In one final giant arc from the oscillator ring, Elsa vanished again, the lab coat once more fluttering to its place on the floor.
Author's Notes
We've established more of the rules around this time travel business in this chapter. As I post this, I'll be doing a double post chapter so episode 6 will be up along with this one.
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