Chapter 13: Dead or Alive?

Casey paced the length of the monitor with his arms crossed and his eyes blazing.

"This thing is not a surveillance tool nor a simple satellite frequency…have you figured out a way to look into the past? Yes or no?"

Rhea stared at him. "No."

"You're lying. You said it, Jones, not me, Costa went down days ago…he doesn't know it yet. What is that supposed to mean if this isn't a time-travel device? Better yet, forget all that. I know it is, now, explain it to me!"

Rhea looked to Simon and the Tech clasped his hands behind his head, and spoke fast.

"Okay, five years ago we were attempting to use condensed bursts of energy to augment the sensitivity of optical telescopes and in the process we had a breakthrough. Given enough energy…we could warp the very fabric of space…is that good enough?" He mumbled, avoiding Casey's gaze.

To everyone's surprise Casey laughed, but it was an intense, humorless laughter that would only be followed by angry outbursts. Rhea jumped to his side and held his arm, hoping to diffuse his temper. He stared down at her, shaking his head.

"Explain this to me like I'm Joe Schmo just seeing it all for the first time…because I am! I'm not Einstein's brother, okay?"

The others remained quiet. Simon grabbed a piece of paper from the console and commanded Casey's attention. He held the paper down.

"Space is flat like this piece of paper." He ran his hand across it on a diagonal. "To see something from a distance, light has always traveled the long way across the flat space in between."

Casey grunted with understanding and Simon folded the paper on the diagonal as if making a paper airplane. "But…we can fold the space, bringing the target close to us and hanging via a gravitational field. It creates a bridge."

Casey shrugged. "We're not talking about the Golden Gate bridge here…what is it? Where's the bridge?"

Althea joined the discussion. "It's an immediate link between two points, Major. It takes enormous amounts of energy to create these images. It's an invisible bridge to the human eye, but very real. The past is on the other side of that bridge."

"And how did you harness enough energy?" Casey's curiosity exploded.

Simon stroked his beard and Rhea twirled her feet like a little girl, keeping her gaze on her sparkling shoes.

"Remember that little black-out in 2003?" She stammered.

"Get out of here! You suctioned two days of energy out of half the North-East to juice this thing?"

"Yeah…it was a pain…but it got us off the ground, it was easy to fault Con-Ed."

Simon saw the gears spinning in Casey's mind. He wasn't about to play Back to the future.

"Look Major, we created this entirely by accident and everyone's afraid of messing with it in case we lose the feed or suffer the consequences of God knows what…we can only use it as a retroactive viewing tool!"

"John, we're always looking into the past…light reflected in a mirror takes time to get back to us to create our image." Rhea added.

Simon ran behind the console after his courageous discourse and slid into his chair. Rhea held her ground, hoping that Casey would accept their explanations. Casey gazed back at the monitor. Chuck had left the room earlier to shower and change and returned in a t-shirt and pajama pants. He was still disturbed over the red light, and peeked out the window a final time before jumping into bed. Chuck was about to shut his lamp, but then decided to leave it on. He looked like a boy afraid of the dark and snuggled deep under his blanket, bringing it close up to his nose. His eyes darted left to right.

"So much for fearless Agent Carmichael! Forget it…if Casey says it's safe, then it's safe. He's a jerk, but I trust him with my life." Chuck consoled himself, then closed his eyes and drifted into a troubled sleep.

Casey studied the image sadly. Major Jerk Casey. That's exactly what he was. He'd just disturbed Chuck's last days with the red laser dot stunt. He reflected on seeing Julia and Charlotte the other night. Deep in his gut he knew they sensed a presence. His presence. It even changed their conversation over lunch. Without taking his eyes from the monitor he questioned the others coolly.

"Is Chuck alive or is he dead?"

Rhea smiled wanly. "We went to the funerals, John."

Casey whirled around. "I know that, but the question is still relevant. Is Chuck, and everyone else we've been watching from Buy More, alive, or are they dead?"

Simon tried to reason. "Major, you're asking us to give you the answers to existential questions that science can't…"

Casey marched past Rhea and picked up a small chair next to the console. Wang rolled away in his chair and held up his hands in surrender.

"Time for fireworks." He groaned.

Casey turned and smashed the chair against a small VDT to the left of the giant monitor. It sizzled and turned black. He threw the chair across the room, not caring where it landed. Rhea shrank back into the console, but his destructive fit seemed to be over.

"John! Stop it!"

"Okay! I'm fine. I'm calm. Now the monitor's broken! The monitor is dead! It has not departed into some existential plane of afterlife; it hasn't fluttered away into the clouds! It's dead! The Buy More exploded, people were ripped apart, crushed, burned…ashes to ashes, dust to dust…they're dead!"

Casey roughly tapped the giant screen. "But…on this thing here, behind this bridge, is Chuck alive, or is he dead?"

Rhea tearfully bit her lip. "He's alive!"

Casey rushed back to her side; he lifted her and twirled her around. "I could kiss you, Rhea! Now, we're getting somewhere!" He put her down and strutted around the room, gesturing at the three scientists behind the console.

"You mentioned that light can go back, what else? Can you send a body? A human?"

"No, not alive." Simon shook his head sternly.

"Why not?"

"Major, you can't beat physics! You can't transfer an ion impulse… that's your heartbeat, brain waves and all that…a human would die. We tested it over and over with rats, hamsters…dogs."

Althea gasped. "You tested dogs! How could you?"

"Althea, we had to make sure, we needed something with more body mass, they were strays…"

"Will you quit it? Forget the damn dog, it's always about the dog. There's mass human destruction and annihilation on a global scale and we worry about Frou Frou and Rex!" Casey growled. "What about a radio signal?"

"No good, the feed will scramble it, it's too weak." Wang said.

"Okay…a note! A warning!"

Rhea popped her head up, but kept silent. Casey had suggested what she intended to do, for both her past self and the past Major John Casey. She'd written detailed letters explaining everything the events that implicated Costa in the entire conspiracy. Rhea decided to wait on sending it through the transporter. She knew she needed to add more important details as the case progressed.

These letters were to be in the mail no later than Saturday morning, from the 'DOTS' or Department of Terrorism Surveillance. It was an acronym she made up to sound official, even though she googled and came up with women's funky clothing store. Regardless, Casey didn't understand the consequences of what he asked, and she adamantly refused.

"No, John. We can't!" She glanced sharply at the others when they were about to reconsider.

Casey tossed his hands up. "Dammit! Then send it to me! We can find out exactly where this killer's gonna be, what he's gonna do…why not?"

Rhea stormed up to him. "It's too risky, John! It could change a lot! Althea, you're the theorist, explain it to the Major."

Althea grabbed another sheet of paper and a marker and drew a line with two arrowheads on either side, labeling one side 'Past' the other 'Future.'

"Time is linear…like a river." She drew a large 'X' in the center of the line. "You introduce a significant event at any point in this river and you create a new branch…" She drew another line, darting out from the 'X' on the straight one. "It's still flowing towards the future…but along a different route."

Simon wrung his hands, very on edge. "Major, it's like throwing a pebble into the Nile…it will barely cause a ripple."

For the first time in a long while, Casey felt hopelessly optimistic, he couldn't let the idea go. There had to be a way to save them all.

"I understand this, but suppose we can make a new branch. What happens to the old one?"

Everyone stared grimly at each other. Rhea gave him the unsettling answer.

"Then…it's very possible that we…we all cease to exist."