When Anna felt she had sufficiently exhausted herself, she struck a path that led to the student center. Once she reached it, she found that the cafeteria was unusually crowded for a Wednesday afternoon, so she quickly purchased a bottle of water and ducked into the university's cyber café. Anna sighed in relief when she found it relatively empty.
It was an unusual place to spend an afternoon. The café was always kept fairly dark to satisfy the somber aesthetics of its regular customers, who themselves looked as if they had not seen daylight for years. Neon lights mingled with the soft glow of the monitors to create a bluish aura about the room and make Anna's white shirt shine with a ghoulish light.
Anna found an uninhabited corner of the psychedelic maze and keyed her password into a computer as she eased into a seat. When the homepage appeared, she automatically clicked the mailbox icon.
Two new messages.
The first was an email from Columbia with an attached travel itinerary confirming her upcoming campus visit. She perused the attachment and made a mental note to request that bus travel be arranged en lieu of air – she hated to fly.
After closing the attachment, the other message caught her eye and caused her to frown in puzzlement. The subject was one word only. Annalië. She didn't recognize the sender but thought she could easily guess at his identity.
Anna considered just deleting the email unread, but her cursor was drawn irresistibly to the link that would open the message.
So you just had a birthday. How old does that make you?
Anna emerged from the cyber café walking at a brisk pace and clutching a single paper in her fist. What's the word I'm trying to think of right now? she inwardly seethed. Officious! That's it! That is Gary in one word! Obnoxious would also do very well!
She failed to notice the table where several of her fellow senior-level physics majors were seated until a couple of them waved to get her attention. She debated whether she should just return the wave and keep walking but decided instead to join them and sat next to Brian.
"How'd you all do on the test?" she asked as she snatched a chip from Brian's bag.
Most everyone at the table responded amiably enough save one younger student who muttered darkly under his breath. He was a scrawny boy barely over nineteen and usually pleasant humored, but Anna watched in puzzlement as he pouted over his food.
"Everything okay, Zachary?" Anna asked.
"He's just down because you're the only one who got the invite to Columbia" Brian explained. "The number of accolades he received for his – ahem- project didn't quite meet expectations."
"That's what I get for choosing a controversial subject. The truly brilliant are always misunderstood," Zachary declared, shaking his head and pretending not to notice the amusement of his companions.
"What was your subject?" Anna asked.
The table answered in unison, "Time travel."
"As in Einstein's theories?"
"They always seemed a little muddy to me," Brian remarked as Zachary raised his hands to the ceiling in incredulity for the ignorance he was forced to put up with.
"How did you do your project over time travel?" Anna wondered aloud.
"I came up with a theory," Zachary replied, "but I don't have all the kinks worked out yet to give it the support it needs. I mean, as if I could really accomplish that in time for the project deadline! I had some good groundwork laid, though, and that's what I turned in to Dr. Boaz."
"So what's the theory?" Brian questioned. "You never really explained it to us."
Zachary eased back in his seat with a satisfied smile as if he had been waiting for someone to ask. Stroking his chin thoughtfully in an excellent mad scientist impression, he began, "According to the theory of relativity, time only flows in one direction. You can go forward but not back, right?"
The others nodded.
"Well, I think I can put together a plausible basis for the theory that you can go back – but only if you have already gone forward. Einstein's belief that you can travel through time was based on the idea that the speed of light is always constant while time and distance are subject to fluctuations depending on the point of reference. So like if Brian here does us a favor and boards a shuttle bound for the Outer Rim and if his ship travels at the speed of light, time will pass slower on the ship than it does on earth."
"As chapter 18 of our text book explained most eloquently," Brian put in sarcastically. "So where does your theory come in?"
Zachary made a face at him and continued, "I think after traveling forward through time, so to speak, you will have become part of a virtual timeline while earth still goes by real time. I think you can go back to a place on the real timeline by reversing the whole process."
"What, you mean reverse the speed of light? If that even exists, is it even possible?" another student asked.
"Sure! Through white holes! You know, the opposite of black holes?"
A collective groan sounded around the table accompanied by a "Zachary, you're so full of it!" that was answered by a "Hey guys, why not?!", all of which drew the bewildered attention of several other students in the cafeteria.
"You all remember talking about it! Black holes undergoing a reversal in time – negative time, so to speak – appear as white holes. A black hole and white hole are at opposite ends of a cosmic worm hole. Read my paper," Zachary explained, waving away the skepticism of his listeners with an idle movement.
"So Zachary," Brian commented with a grin, "You mentioned some kinks that had to be dealt with? Were there really very many of those?"
"Okay, laugh it up already!" Zachary cried, raising his palms defensively. "I had some good calculations to turn in with my project that Dr. Boaz said might be a start. The kinks I ran into involved the reversal time flow forming more of a curve than a straight line, so you don't end up going back to the point on the real timeline where you'd think you would go. So Brian-"
"Uh huh, and your 'calculations' showed you this? They were…curvy?" Anna interrupted.
"Sure, why not? So if Brian had aged 20 years on his trip to the Outer Rim, he might not return to the real timeline at 20 years after his departure. It might be more like 40 years."
"Um, I don't see the going back part," Brian said. "Overall, doesn't that still involve me going forward in time 20 years?"
"Agh! You did go forward…and then back! When you got to Tatooine, you were thousands of years in the future! Then when you traveled through negative time, you went back – but not quite so far back."
By this time Anna's fingers were massaging her temples. She quickly decided that joining her classmates as a means of distraction from the officious email was probably not the best choice.
"Sorry boys," she groaned as she rose from the table. "Star Wars reference no. 2 is always my cue to leave. I'll see you all next Tuesday."
Exiting the student center, Anna glanced down at the paper still clenched in her hand and sighed. A serious talk with Susan – if such a thing were possible- was inevitable.
"Huh?" was Susan's response to the cryptic missive Anna had tossed at her.
"No, not 'huh'. I want to know who. Whose email address is that? Gary's?" Anna demanded.
"Anna, I don't think I've ever even activated my own account here, much less memorized anyone's email address."
Anna sighed heavily and collapsed on her bed. "It wouldn't take a genius to figure out my school email address. Did you tell him when my birthday was? And if you did, why would you? It was in January, or that's when my family always celebrated it."
"You know, you answered your own question," Susan observed as she lounged on her own bed against the opposite wall of their dorm. "Why would I tell random people that my roommate's birthday was last month, especially when my own birthday is coming up in April? Really, whether Gary is the one who sent the email or not, it's a little creepy. Personally, I think the creepy factor would be a lot less if Gary was the sender – I promise you he's no more of a weirdo than your average psych major."
Anna conceded the former point but chose not to comment on the latter.
Susan rolled onto her stomach and regarded her roommate with a frown. "I kind of don't understand why the message itself upset you so much. Is it because you don't know your real birthday?"
"Partly," Anna admitted. "I'm more bothered though that the message is trying to imply something – and I don't know what that is. I get the feeling I should."
"The worst implication that it can make is that you're old," Susan said waving her hand in dismissal, "and you act old anyway, so who cares? The message could have been worse. It could have told you the color underwear you're wearing."
Anna humored Susan with a soft chuckle, then both girls fell into a thoughtful silence. The lively chatter of the girls next door drifted through the wall, and Anna idly observed that they were watching Lost on their television.
Susan had her eyes closed, and Anna assumed she had drifted off when she murmured, "Do you want me to talk to Gary about it?"
"No," Anna decided after a moment. "I guess it's really not that important."