A/N: I tried to work enough back story to refresh your memories! I'll try to take not quite so long with the next update. :)
Zane leaned back, resting his head against the concrete wall of the bunker, and closed his eyes.
He wondered what time it was. He'd never been a wristwatch kind of guy. Who needed to wear a clock on your arm when you had one in your pocket? But he hadn't expected to be accidentally jumping into the future and back to the past, either. His cell phone had probably diligently searched for a signal for hours. Unfortunately, every search used juice and by now it was just a lump of useless plastic. Of course, even if it had been working, the time it told might not have matched the time here in 1947.
It felt as if Jo and Amy had been gone for days, but it had probably only been a few hours. He opened his eyes and looked over at the two little demons sitting on the floor, contentedly drawing on the paper that S.A.R.A.H. had sent back in time with the littler one.
Holy cow, kids were hard work. A little peace and quiet, that was all he needed. Somehow he had to figure out how to solve the problem his other self had been working on for decades and quickly. But no, first big Caiti wanted to explore and he'd had to talk her out of that and then little Caiti wanted snacks and they'd had to unpack everything and look at every possible bit of food before settling on cheese and crackers. And then big Caiti wanted to play a game and he didn't know any games and little Caiti wanted a story and he didn't know any stories and then both Caitis started fighting over who got to eat the last cracker.
He really hoped Jo brought more food because little Caiti's habit of eating one bite and then deciding it was yucky had spoiled at least three of their MREs before he'd gotten wise to her and refused to let her touch any more of them.
Idly, he picked up the paper airplane sitting next to his outstretched legs, and aiming carefully, threw it across the bunker toward the doorway.
"I thought you said no more airplanes, Daddy," Caiti said, without looking up from her drawing. "Aren't you supposed to be thinking?"
He sighed. "You're right, I did and I am. But I'm stuck." Then a thought struck him. "Hey, how did you know I threw it? Your back is turned, you couldn't see it."
"I felt it, I guess," Caiti answered. She looked over at her younger self's scribbles and said critically, "You think that's writing but it's really not." Little Caiti's lower lip slid out.
"Don't be mean to your little self," Zane said automatically. She hadn't seen it. But she knew it happened anyway. What did that remind him of?
"S.A.R.A.H. says if it isn't recorded . . ." For the umpteenth time Zane repeated the words little Caiti had said when she arrived. But S.A.R.A.H. wasn't the only one who'd talked about recordings. Caiti had, too, back in the future, when she told him about her invisibility worm. "If it isn't recorded, it doesn't exist."
That wasn't quite right, though. Caiti's invisibility worm didn't stop her from being recorded: it stopped S.A.R.A.H. – or any device – from retrieving information that matched certain parameters. But if you couldn't retrieve the information, it might as well not exist. If a tree fell in a forest – or a little girl snuck out of her bedroom – did it make a sound? Maybe not if no one heard it.
Eureka was trapped in a time loop caused by changing the past in such a way that the person making the change – the person who knew enough to make the change – no longer existed. There could be no future until the paradox was broken, until the kaleidoscope pieces settled into a state where the past led to the future without the future affecting the past.
The future Eurekans hoped that by erasing all knowledge of the future, the time loop would break. And they were making the choice to risk their lives, everything they'd created and done, to make it happen. Of course, his cynical self reminded him, they had no real choice: one way or another, they ceased to exist the moment he pressed the button on his version of the bridge device. His experience was different, ergo his future was different and they would never come to exist. Not the same way.
He looked across at the room at the two Caitis. The littler one was leaning on her bigger self's leg, watching the big Caiti draw, tongue between her lips slightly sticking out. He'd seen that thoughtful look on older Caiti when they were puzzling over pancakes together.
He swallowed, feeling a weird lump in his throat. If he followed his idea to its logical conclusion, Caiti was already gone. But the other kids had existed in previous timelines, so the timelines didn't have to be an exact match, just close enough. And to make the timelines match . . . what if someone could both know and not know the future? What if someone knew exactly what should happen at exactly the right moment to make it happen? What if someone always knew just enough to push the odds in the right direction, without ever knowing what she knew?
What if they made a record of every important moment, every crucial decision in Eureka's future timeline, and then locked the data away in S.A.R.A.H.'s memory until it was needed? Could S.A.R.A.H. steer them to the future they wanted without ever being aware of what she was doing?
"All right, Caiti, I need you to help me," Zane said abruptly. It was time to use all his available resources and Caiti had spent a lot more time messing with S.A.R.A.H.'s programming than he ever had.
"But I don't remember anything, Daddy," Caiti replied, putting down her pencil and turning to face him.
"I know," he assured her. "But this isn't about what you remember. I need you to help me solve a problem. Highest IQ ever measured, right? Let's see what it's good for." He grinned at her.
She smiled back at him, almost shyly.
"Me do too," Little Caiti said, the lower lip sliding stubbornly out again.
"All right," Zane said, turning his grin on her, too. "You can help, too." She was definitely a monster – willful and determined and completely unreasonable – but something about that pout made him think of Lupo and he couldn't help liking it. Not that he'd ever seen the Enforcer pout. No, she wasn't the pouting type. But if she ever did, he imagined she'd look much like little Caiti.
He quickly explained the problem to Caiti. They had to spend a little time talking about the nature of time, and he had to grab some of the paper and sketch out some ideas for her, but they hadn't been kidding about that highest IQ ever measured business: she grasped the situation and its ramifications in no time.
"How can you know what's most important, though?" Caiti asked, once she understood the problem.
"Exactly," Zane answered. He sighed. Maybe this wouldn't work after all. "And how can we be sure S.A.R.A.H. or someone else doesn't accidentally access the information?"
"S.A.R.A.H. can access it all she wants," Caiti said. "As long as she forgets again right away."
"What do you mean?" Zane asked.
"She catches me sometimes." Caiti's dimples flashed at him. "But as long as I can make her forget before she has a chance to tell Mommy, it doesn't matter. She only knows for a tiny bit, not long enough to get me in trouble."
Wow, his child was an evil mastermind. Zane was proud.
"Her processors are shiny fast, too. I could write a subroutine that would let her look at the data for microseconds every day and then forget everything she didn't need to know. That part would be easy." Caiti sounded excited, but then she added in a plaintive tone. "But I don't know how she'd know what she should know."
"Wait," Zane said. "You're here. And you were here before, because you remember it. And S.A.R.A.H. sent you back here, so S.A.R.A.H. already knows what she needs to know. We just need to figure out how she knows it." He jumped to his feet and started to pace.
"That was confusing, Daddy," Caiti said, watching him, her look skeptical.
"Sawa tews heself stowies." Little Caiti had gone back to the paper and was scribbling on it with enthusiasm.
"What?" Zane whirled around, looking at the toddler intently. "What did you say?"
"Sawa yikes people." Caiti held up her drawing and admired it. "Yook, Dada. Me rode a detter. To Gamma."
"That's not a letter," Big Caiti said scornfully. "It's just scribbles."
Zane opened his mouth to tell her not to be mean, but stopped, mouth half open, before the words got out.
And then, slowly, he started to smile.