Chloe gently lifted a tangle of hair from Max's face, tucked it behind her ear. Early Monday morning. Still dark. Four maybe. The air was cool on the exposed half of Chloe's face. She was still mostly awake. Max was half in, half out. They both played the big spoon, facing each other. Emo curled in a ball between them under the covers, quietly purring. Obnoxious little fuzzball.
"…hey…" Max sighed. Stretched a little without moving.
Chloe pushed her lips into Max's forehead. Whispered quietly into her skin, "still have another hour or two…"
"…yay…" a quiet little cheer. "…should we let him sleep?"
"…now that it's almost morning and he's finally stopped using us as a racetrack?"
"…forgot how much energy he had when he was little…"
"…we need to wear him out better during the day."
"…so sweet when he's sleeping though…" Max ran her fingers lightly through Chloe's hair. "…two hours?"
Chloe turned her head, kissed Max's wrist. "…uh huh."
"k…"
Max closed her eyes, snuggled into her pillow. Chloe did the same, careful of Emo. World's cutest little asshole…
Tracey put her car in park, turned off the engine. She went to flip the roof up, caught herself. Winter. Hadn't put it down. This had been her world since last Thursday night. Scattered. Trouble focusing for more than a few minutes at a time. Too much, too weird, and she didn't have an altogether confident grasp of what had really happened to her.
Sitting at home streaming the news hadn't helped. They didn't have much insight. She stopped paying attention to her social streams completely. Too many reporters and bloggers pinging her for comments. Thousands of new followers, for what? Why was she suddenly more interesting? The attention made her feel even more isolated. She ignored the calls from home. She knew she'd have to return them tonight though. Last thing she wanted was for her parents to send private investigators knocking after her again.
It was just another grey morning outside the windscreen.
Reminded her of home.
But…not the good parts.
She wasn't ready to get out of her car yet. Sat quietly, held her coffee without drinking. Warm. Glanced at herself in the rear view, but looked away as quickly. She couldn't shake the feeling that walking in would be something of a point of no return. Change things she couldn't change back. She'd give almost anything to forget. Go back to the way things were between them. Easy. Light.
Could still drive away…
But…she'd been shot. She knew she had? Along with so many others. Right? She remembered the shock. Not the pain, but the fall. Then the sunlight and the fury. Some sort of bright something Chloe did. Blinding them, maybe? Tracey couldn't see anything afterwards. Not for a while. The pain came later. In stillness, waiting for medics. Then Chloe was back again, all calm and talking and nonsense, and the pain was just…gone. There was blood, but… She'd spent hours over the weekend staring at her leg. Eyes close to her skin. Back to the mirror. Then with her phone's camera. Feeling for the place it must have been, but she was already losing track. Was it there? Or there? Without that reality written forever into her skin, it was like it never happened. But she knew it had. Hadn't it?
John promised answers, but hadn't delivered. He'd worked through the entire weekend. And while he didn't completely ignore her… No, he did. He completely ignored me. He…left me behind. Then by myself for days to sort it out on my own. Or not.
Yes, his bosses had nearly been shot. But what could he do about it after the fact? What the seven hells was he even doing all weekend? He wasn't a cop. She was the one who'd been hurt. No attention. She expected more from him. He'd texted her later that morning. Compulsory contact, but without feeling.
She finally saw him again. Briefly, on Sunday afternoon. But it was just awkward. Eyes failing to connect. He pushed her questions to Monday. She couldn't press, and he wouldn't say more. They couldn't pretend either. Just…stuck.
He still hasn't come back for me. Not in the ways that matter.
So this is me now, going out to find him…
Monday morning. Looking for answers to questions she didn't want to have. She knew she was right about the point of no return. And that walking in that door was either a way back to what they were, or…a way apart…
Complete fucking disaster of a party, though.
That'll look good on the old resume'…
There.
There she is.
There's your inner arsehole…
Time. Get on with it.
Chloe rode the elevator down to the twentieth floor, caught the turn to C-wing. Cafeteria. She could have made breakfast and coffee upstairs. But by the time she woke up, Max was already out and gone.
Calling this a 'cafeteria' was an injustice. Or maybe part of the joke. It was nearly four-star dining, with chefs recruited from top restaurants in the city and beyond. Bright and clean. Six permanent mini-restaurants on the floor represented a variety of cuisine styles, and four additional showcase kitchens were set aside for guest brands or teams, rotating in and out every couple of months. The best food-truck crews, the hot new restaurants in town. A former street food vendor from Kashgar, China, randomly… Max liked their soup dumplings. Open to everyone who worked here. People had their favorites to choose from, and the rotation brought variety.
Chloe's favorite was predictable. Old school. Diner style, back right. Never as good as mom's, but that was a high bar, filtered through a layer of nostalgia. Breakfast was on the menu all day and night, and the pancakes and waffles were always delicious.
All venues took electronic orders, and Chloe dropped hers by text before getting dressed that morning. She caught the eye of the waiter, nodded a greeting, took her usual booth by the window.
Seating was everywhere. Booths, tables, lounges. Chloe suspected that on any given day, more problems were solved on this floor than anywhere else in the building. It was a popular space for informal work-sessions. Meant the kitchen and wait staff all had to be cleared, of course. Might overhear something. So they had backgrounds run, NDAs, frequent telepathic scans, the usual. Aside from the chefs, most of the cafeteria staff were family members of employees. Kept things simple.
She looked around. Packed as ever.
Everyone here knew them by sight, of course. And Chloe knew all of them back, in detail. Max had to work at it, but she made it a point of pride to give a solid effort. At least some of their names. And when she got one wrong, she had her own ways to recover. They could always tell the new people though. Stood out. They were usually the ones casting excited, nervous glances. The old timers would give a low key nod or a smile, or ignore them. Whatever. It was just breakfast. The novelty of seeing them wore off for everyone after a couple of days.
But the mood this morning was different. Quieter. Not just the back-to-work after the holidays kind of quiet, although that would be part of it. The news cycle around the attack accelerated over the weekend. International attention. Social media and mainstream news referenced and amplified each other's content, feeding back an increasingly noisy loop of non-information. Talking heads debated the pros and cons of hunting for the identity of the brave little girl, a minor. Speculated about the guest list, the targets, motives, ties to terrorism.
No mentions of her or Max, thankfully. There had been hundreds of photos taken by others at the scene that captured one or more of their team in the background. Maybe a two dozen that included Alena more clearly than she appeared in the video of the attack, looping endlessly this past weekend. Took Chloe a few minutes to scrub them from all of the pictures that night, before they left. Mental Photoshop. Photos ended up the same. Just…missing a few people who used to be there in some cases.
Some of the noise over the weekend focused on the bright light in the video. The one the gunmen were shown firing into. Hive mind assumed it was some sort of personal defense flashlight tool someone used. Others said it was just a miracle that no one was seriously injured, given the number of shots fired. But a smaller few talked of literal miracles. Conspiracy rumors online blending magic and black helicopters. Everyone tore into the backgrounds of the shooters, while some turned conspiracy theories they'd been programmed, hacked or coerced. Frame-grabs became memes. Wildfire.
But inside these walls, the news was reality based - if no less weird. So the buzz tracked with the facts. The speculation was about what came next. Or before, depending on how it was handled. This one was big. City was off limits, but they hit home anyway. Broke the rules. The glances and nods Chloe felt this morning were from a place of solidarity.
Comforting in some ways, but…
The waiter brought out her plate of waffles, bacon, eggs and a cup of black coffee. While she ate, part of her scanned the previous night's recordings, caught up on global news, social, scanned mission reports, briefings and the portion of captured documents that had been converted from paper to digital so far. Half or so. A fraction of what she wanted to know going into the 10am meeting. But Max would have more for her before then.
She buzzed Emo with a hummingbird drone while she worked and ate. Needed to wake his furry little butt up. If she could keep him busy chasing the drone all day, or maybe its targeting laser at least, there was a chance they'd get some sleep tonight.
Waiter refreshed her coffee on the way to somewhere else. She was feeling pretty tired, and a bit jealous of Max; she could nap whenever the hell she wanted. Rewind the time away after. Just for one day, if we could trade places… Maybe just a quick nap before lunch? Check in on Emo for half an hour. Down at his level? With a pillow?
Without warning, John plopped down on the opposite side of the booth, scooted over with a vinyl squeak. Hector dropped in beside him without a sound. Gave Chloe a head nod and a smile, flipped the hair back out of his eyes.
"Been a while, John."
"Almost hours." He picked up a menu, gestured to the empty space next to Chlo. "Max testing adaptive camo again?"
"Heh. You wish... No, she's offsite. And uh, Hector! My man! Welcome back, dude. How was Mexico City? Family?" Gave him an over the table fist bump. He exploded it.
"All good… Thanks again for signing that photobomb."
"Hope she liked it."
"Photobomb?" John asked, looking over the top of his menu.
Chloe threw a small holo of the photo into the air over the table. Desk-selfie of Hector, Chloe flipping off the camera with both hands behind him, off in the background, slightly out of focus. "For his little sister."
"Fangirl." added Hector.
"Ah. Got it."
"Speaking of…" said Chloe. "What's up with your fangirl, Michaels?"
"Guess we'll find out later if I can still call her that?"
"Saw her on the orientation list… You giving the tour?"
"I've got work. Sophie volunteered first shift. Was hoping you guys might have a little time late afternoon for us? Just hang out, let her get the questions out of her system? Maybe take her first impressions beyond the strictly theoretical, if it's not too much trouble?"
"Should be cool. I'll give Max a heads-up once she's back."
"Margaret?"
"Yeah - after practice this morning she was gonna check in. Update on our friends, before the huddle."
Hector looked a little lost. Still playing catchup after weeks back home. "Fill you in later, Hector. Margaret has a new collection of bad guy boy-toys. So Max is hopefully bringing back some intel for us…"
He nodded. "Right. Caught the news. Also heard a rumor you guys found some new toys? Including a furry one?"
"I'm pretty sure we're the toys for the furry one. But yeah. Old friend from another timeline. You should come by later too. I'm sure he'll be tearing around. You could say hi, help wear him out. Please? He for real needs wearing out. John, can you, uh, fill him in on the rest?"
"Will do."
"Cool. Anyway, gotta bounce. Welcome back, dude. Catch you in a few, Michaels."
Their food arrived as she got up to leave.
Hector switched sides.
Tracey looked at the greying man across the table. Windowless office off the main lobby. "Do I need legal counsel?"
"Up to you Miss Wells. You're obviously welcome to review the terms with your advisors if you'd like. But these are pretty standard. Nondisclosure. Indemnification… Everyone signs. Or not. But for you to go beyond the ground floor, we'll need to have signed copies on file. It's a formality, but a strict one."
"But I've been to the penthouse. Guest of the founders?"
"I understand. I'm afraid this is different. That was the express elevator from the garage."
"So if I don't sign, or if I'd like my lawyers to go over these first, I don't get in today?"
"That's correct. Unless your people can review and advise quickly, of course. But you should understand - there's not an opportunity to edit these documents. You can sign or not. But the terms are set. We'll still be here. It's really not a problem if you'd like to reschedule."
No. It's probably a problem.
Screw it.
"Where do I scribble?"
Sophie made a quick note in her calendar. She and John agreed they should send Tracey through the same orientation that all new employees go through. An orchestrated experience designed to accomplish exactly what they intended for her.
There was psychology behind the staging. Applied learning theory. Information processing. Pacing. Context. Refined over the tens of thousands of people who'd gone through it. Each session was a little unique, a reflection of the specifics of the people in the room, how they might play off each other. Designed to feel interactive, mostly spontaneous. The purpose was partly to educate, orient and inspire about MCCP and its progress against their shared public mission. And partly to get past some of the strange shit behind the curtain without completely freaking them out.
Chloe referred to it as the Art of Boiling the Frog.
Max always made that face when she said it.
The founding mythology wasn't part of the program. That usually came from peers, over time. A screen cap. A link.
Sometimes third or fourth-hand stories over shots.
Tracey would get that later, firsthand.
Probably over shots.
Sophie got word that she was waiting in the lobby, NDAs signed.
She'd head down in a minute to escort her down to the room.
It was a slow day - there were only five new hires going through the program with her.
Tracey played with her new badge as she walked through the lobby. A yellow lanyard with 'Guest' printed on it hung around her neck. She turned it over in her hands. Plastic, with her name, photo, and other details. Escort Required, it said. Security holograms. Heavier than she expected.
In past visits, she'd come up through the parking garage with John on the way to the penthouse for dinner or whatever. This was her first time waiting in the lobby. It was nice. Expensive. Like a luxury transit hub.
She noticed the little details. Thickness of the doors when she first entered. Glass. Heavy, but well balanced. The kind of high-security precision construction usually reserved for protection of small, precious spaces, or for the secure display of national artifacts or rare art. Applied here on a grand scale to something as mundane as the front door to an office building. She wondered at what she couldn't see. This really must have cost a bloody fortune to build.
She headed for an empty seating area near the perimeter on the opposite side.
The lobby itself was minimal. Spanned the entire ground floor of the cylindrical hub of the building. Hundred meters in diameter. Entrances on three sides. The thick walls of glass brought the outside in. A transitional space. Beautiful though. Designers were obviously inspired by an elegant sort of futurism. Clean, white gloss and glass surfaces everywhere. But organic. Not cold. Natural materials. Dark river rocks arranged tastefully around the circumference. Horsetail reeds in planters, neatly trimmed. Ceiling was thirty feet above them. Low but comfortable furniture. Coffee shop at the entrance to one of the wings, for waiting guests, just beyond the featureless door where she'd probably signed her life away minutes before.
In the very center of the lobby space stood the structural core, thirty meters or so across. Three inset elevator doors faced out across the lobby toward each wing. Between the three sets of elevator banks, three long reception desks followed the long curve of the wall. She could see the pattern as she passed through it. Like a series of nested rings. From the outer glass to the seating arrangements to the reception desks to the core wall… Although 'wall' might not be the right word exactly. Now that she'd seen it from all sides.
She couldn't tell if the whole thing was a print, or video screen, or maybe a projection. Bright. Sharp. But had depth. Filled with an enormous image of the earth, seen from above, looking out to the horizon. Blues and browns and greens beneath a swirling blue white, catching the edges of blue atmosphere before curving away into itself. Wrapping around the entire heart of the building. For some reason, seeing Earth at this scale made it all feel much smaller to her. And the space much larger.
Everything that's ever happened to any of us ever took place on that finite stage…
Took her a moment to realize it was moving.
Wait… is this…?
She recognized Sophie, walking toward her from one of the elevators.
"Morning, Tracey. Are you ready for your day with us?"
Tracey gave her an air kiss on each cheek in greeting. "Tell me I'm not losing my mind, dear? That I'm not going to regret meeting him?"
Sophie led her to the elevator. "You're not losing your mind."
"…Deft."
"Only you can answer the second part. And only in time."
"If I might ask, what is it that you do here again?"
"More than I ever imagined." The doors opened as they approached.
Tracey noticed. "You're not wearing a badge?"
"The building knows who I am. Minus three, please."
The doors closed, and the numbers above counted down as they dropped.
Chloe looked up right as Max pushed open the door to The Fishbowl. For once, I'm not the one who's late. Chloe, patted the chair next to her. "Hey. Saved your seat. Michaels has been eyeballing it - sooooo…good thing you showed up."
Max stuck her tongue out at Chloe. Waved at the others. "Hey everybody. Sorry. Got tied up. I could come back a few minutes earlier if that's better?"
"It's cool. We were mostly catching up on everyone's break. Through last Friday, anyway…" Chloe said.
"M'kay. Oh, here, Chlo. Present." Max plopped down next to her, held out a closed hand.
Chloe caught the small block of transparent crystal as it fell. Half the size of a sugar cube. It glowed softly blue as she held it between her thumb and forefinger, reading its contents. "How's Margaret?"
"She's good. Said to pass along her hellos to everyone. And the files, obviously."
"Learn anything?" Chloe already had more than Max could have taken away from a conversation. She set the crystal down, activating the table's holo UI around it. Gracefully tapped the ring of icons in the air, pushed the data out to the network where others could use it.
"Few things. Still some big gaps. We'll get to it. Um, everybody coffee'd up and stuff? Should we jump right in?"
John was to their left, representing direct ops. Parker, the science team lead assigned to The Device, was next to him. Jeremy, their COO, sat across; he was the real day to day business operations guy, working with legal, finance, and the nuts and bolts of running a complex company of this scale and ambition. Jillian, their CMO, stationed to their right. Managed the teams responsible for marketing, communications, public profile. Sophie would also be along shortly. Talent perspective, but also welcome in any meeting on her own merits. Half the time, one or another department heads, remote office leads or project runners would pop in by holo. Sophie added Jillian to the list this week. Last minute. It was a good call with the public dimension, but she seemed a little flustered to Chloe.
A moment later, she confirmed it. "I feel like I have to apologize. I'm not especially prepared. I only just caught the calendar invite, and didn't see any kind of agenda attached? Wasn't sure what I should bring along, or…?"
John and Jeremy both chuckled.
Chloe shook her head, let her off the hook. "Yeah, don't…don't sweat it. Not that kinda meeting."
"This your first time?" asked Max.
"Once before, about a week after I first came on. Was still working on getting my bearings. I'm honored to be included again though… I know the early Monday sessions can be pretty exclusive."
"Heh. It's okay. And…I don't really know if 'exclusive' is the right word. We mostly don't want to waste everyone else's time." said Max with a smile.
"Just ours." said John, chomping on a smuggled apple tart.
"What she's trying to say is the ratio of deliverables to fucking around is pretty highly skewed in the 'fucking around' direction…" added Chloe, sipping her coffee. "I mean, it's me and Michaels in the same room. How much work could really get done?" she shrugged. John nodded.
"We started these…well, they were supposed to be an informal catch up originally, but they usually devolve into an hour of goofing around. And every great once in a while, a decent idea happens. Mostly by accident. This is the first one in a while where we have something real to catch up on." said Max.
"Oh. Well, that makes me feel better. Thanks. I assumed it was related to last week, but didn't know what was expected of me."
"Yeah, no book reports or anything. Just wanted your brains in the room." said Chloe, looking to Parker as well.
They were downplaying it a bit to put Jillian and Parker at ease.
It was true that these sessions weren't super formal. Jeremy had his own staff meeting right after for that. Chloe had every business detail at the periphery of her mind already anyway - and she could probably run the whole show from the core if she was ever motivated to do so. But she preferred to stay focused on more interesting problems. They weren't bureaucrats by nature. It's why they had a COO. It's why they had competent department heads - who were expected to work most things out among themselves.
Hierarchy wasn't a thing anyway. The mission was the focus and motivator for everyone, and their people were expected to be self-winding, use good judgement, work together, and alert if there were issues they couldn't solve. Best way to scale to the critical mass necessary. Max and Chloe would play tiebreakers when needed, but they mostly left experts free to expert, with peer transparency as the main check and balance. Worked well enough last loop.
As a result, most of Max & Chloe's time was their own. Or at least, unstructured.
This was their one regular time on Jeremy's calendar to gather for whatever needed gathering about. Moving things forward, new challenges, or…things that might be stuck. Making plans. Crazy ideas. There was a decent amount of fucking around too, truth be told. Sometimes pancakes… Helped them sort the tension between what was possible and what should be. Fluid agenda. Rotating cast of characters. A time where they could sort priorities and direction beyond the day to day. Or when there was something pressing that needed a sharp focus outside of an ops floor or lab. Like today.
Max continued, "So first things I guess… Anyone have anything interesting going on this week?"
A few laughs.
"Right. Let's jump in. I know you guys have a hard stop. Chloe? I think you have the talking stick?"
She nodded. Chloe often ran these when they had a real topic. Which made sense, given her…unique perspective.
They relied on so many others to help make everything go, here and around the world. People, systems, machines. And everything about everything ended up somewhere in the computational and storage core of MCCP.
It was hers, and no one could see it in quite the same way.
Chloe grew the first core in a six-inch spherical hollow at the center of a nearby mountain, using a microscopic part of herself as the initial seed. For all its power, it remained a tiny thing, maybe the size of a soda can. At least, on the outside. It would continue to fill the cavity before growing into the surrounding rock, expanding inward and outward as needed, protected by thousands of feet of solid material on all sides. Information flowed along billions of microscopic filaments radiating away, woven through the rocks and out under the desert floors. They grew, divided, built more of themselves, insinuated into data lines, backbones, trunks, fiber, anything with a signal along the way.
The entire spectrum was fair game, as the definitions of wired and wireless blurred. The ground itself became carrier, insulator, and intelligent antenna for the core. Linked with trillions of microscopic counterparts above, carried along by the wind. Amorphous. Invisible. Mostly inactive for now. As an extension of Chloe's own augmented design, the core was as much a part of her ambient consciousness as her own body. At least while she was linked. On Earth, in range.
She was decades away from potentially experiencing the whole of the planet in real-time though. Ten more seeds had been planted around the world over the past six months. But they needed time to grow. Reach out. Connect to each other directly. Still unsure if she wanted to make the final leap with her own biology that would be necessary. She had time. Which was the running joke between them.
It took effort to pay attention to all of it at once. The stored information. Data streams. Sort signal from noise. Notice the exceptions, the patterns. Edit and select what was important for the teams to see.
She didn't mind the occasional role of meeting runner. It was an excuse to dive in. The feeling, even this early, was astonishing. Sometimes she'd get lost in the moment. Thinking, being, perceiving so much faster than her body or the world outside could possibly move. There were limits to how long she could stay before she started missing Max though.
She forced herself to re-focus on the present. To slow down. A holo came to life above the conference table. "Okay, here's a quick reconstruction of events so we're all starting from the same place…"
She absently flew past Emo, just out of reach, dancing with him into the living room upstairs…
Tracey had only just said goodbye to Sophie, entered the room when the man walked in behind her and closed the door. Unassuming. Looked rather like an accountant from a past era. White shirt, black tie.
He took his place at the front of the room. "Hi everyone. Please…take a seat. My name is Hank Larsen. I'll be facilitating your orientation session this morning. Thank you. Please.
"Great. So before we begin, I'd just like to welcome all of you. You've all chosen to be here. We've chosen to have you. So...good judgement all around I hope. You should feel as honored to be here as we are that you've joined us.
"But I confess that we haven't been completely forthcoming. We haven't been untruthful, and none of you were brought in under false pretenses.
"But we haven't told you everything either. Makes sense, right? Expected that there'd be a secret or two. You came here expecting to learn things. Expecting to participate in some small way in changing the future. Some of you may even believe that you're here to help save the world. Or understand it. Advance quality of life. What have you.
"You have no idea how literally true all of that is.
"You've all signed contracts, Non-disclosure agreements. Probably longer than you're used to. Scarier language maybe. I don't need to say anything about that. You'll understand why before you leave here today. And I think you'll agree.
"But enough of my artfully vague preamble. Let's quickly go around the room. Introduce yourselves. I have no idea what to call you right now. Say a little about what areas you play in? Let's start with you."
He pointed at the balding man near the front.
"Uh, okay. Um. Hello everyone." He turned around half-way over his chair back. "My name is Davide Duboque. I'm a physicist with a background in high energy research. I was referred in by a colleague who has been here for nearly a year now. We worked together in Canada before then, studying WIMPs."
A few in the room chuckled. Shrugged.
He continued, "I'm sorry, I did not mean to be funny. I don't know, maybe not everyone here is a physicist?" He looked over his glasses. "WIMPs are weakly interacting massive particles. Candidates for dark matter. Very tricky to detect. I'm here to continue this research."
"Great, thank you Davide. You next?" He motioned to a woman sitting a row back.
"Hi y'all. Thank you. My name is Mary Walker. I'm a geneticist. I work with food crops mostly. Wheat. Corn. Figure out how to modify genes to hopefully make them better for us. Things like increased disease resistance, pest resistance, draught tolerance, and improved vitamin load. Not a lot of cosmic significance, but I'd like to see if we might help farmers on difficult land become self-sustaining."
"What brought you here to us, Ms. Walker?" Hank asked.
"Mrs. 22 years now. Um, I left my last job after they patented a few of my splices, then locked them away. Killed a paper and a talk I'd worked hard on. Said they were trying to protect the research, but they were more interested in preventing anyone from seeing it. I took a chance, applied here after I read an article about those little reactors. How y'all were open-licensing them to anyone for a dollar? Thought it might be a better fit."
"Thank you. I hope so too. You miss? Mrs.? I don't want to get myself in trouble now." He smiled, pointed to Tracey.
"Oh, sorry. I'm not actually an employee. Do you still want me to…?"
"Yes. Please." He gave a shrug and a flat smile. "It would just be awkward to call you 'hey lady' all day."
"Right. Sorry. My name is Tracey Wells. Spoiled the secret already, but I'm not an employee."
"And what do you do for a living elsewhere?"
"I'm an art historian, specializing in ancient cultural artifacts. I'm currently on contract with a number of auction houses in the US and abroad, and resident at the Metropolitan Art Museum here in the city for the past two years."
Hank paused. "I'm sorry Miss Wells. I didn't put it together. You were there, weren't you? It was your…shindig…they were at?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Wow. So you've hung out with them. Were…hanging out with them. Socially. In person. You were okay? After I mean?"
Tracey took a chance. She was here for answers, after all. "Well, I was shot in the leg, but now I'm apparently not." A few of the others looked her way.
Hank nodded, put his hand out. "We'll come back to that. I understand why you're here now. I'm sorry - it's… first day back. You were just added this morning. You'll find some of this interesting I think." He motioned behind Tracey, large man. "What about you sir? Yes."
"Hi everyone. I'm Todd. Smith. I was recruited off my team by an old CO."
"SEAL? Navy?"
"That's correct, sir."
"Welcome. They don't know it yet, but everyone in this room will be glad you're onboard at some point." Hank nodded graciously. "And you next?" He pointed to the woman next to Todd.
"Hey. Michelle Washington. Just graduated. MIT. Electrical engineering. Robotic vision. I uh… haven't done anything real yet. Sorry."
"Don't sell yourself short. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here. Welcome. And you?" Hank motioned to the last man.
"Hello. Uh. Don O'Connell. NYPD detective. Well, former I guess. Have a…thing for patterns. Numbers. Audits and accounting. Worked white collar crime for the past ten years. And given present company, maybe I'm not so sure how I fit into all of this now?"
Hank leaned back against the whiteboard. "I am. You will. That's actually a good segue though. We didn't plan this, folks. But yes - you might have noticed that not everyone fits the same mold. We're not a normal company. Or a normal anything, really. We do have a lot of multi-disciplinary teams. Sorry, you have a question Mrs. Walker?"
She was clearly agitated. Glanced at the two men toward the back before turning to face Hank. "The mix of academics, I understand. Genetics. Physics. Robotics. These make sense in a diversified applied sciences company…"
"Thank you."
"But the only reason you match those kinds of fields with military and police, no offense, is if you're conducting government weapons research and development. Drones. Energy stuff. Bio-warfare. I didn't sign up for any of that."
"Mrs. Walker, I can assure you that we are many things. But we're not a government weapons research organization. We have weapons. A lot of them, in fact. Mostly non-lethal. We have drones. But you can buy those in department stores now. And we do have a fair number of ex-military and law enforcement wandering the halls. Our own security services, if you will. But we don't rent them out. We're not interested in waging wars. And we're not interested in geography or culture or religion or anything like that as defining characteristics of friend or foe. We're also not here to preserve the trend line of the status quo. Which has made us unpopular with a few folks out there.
"We're interested in the future. Getting there in one piece. Pulling as many with us as we can, as comfortably as possible. Making sure that our non-human friends stick along for the ride. Plants. Animals. We have that responsibility. You get the idea. So everything we do is in service to that end. Sometimes it can be dangerous work. Takes us to some dark places. In those cases, we like to send backup along. Make sure everyone comes back to the light.
"Look, I can stand here and explain to you all the ways we're not what you're hoping we aren't. But if I might continue, I think it would be more beneficial to show you what we are. It's not what you think. It's never what any of you think. It's not what I thought when I was in that chair right over there." He pointed to the left side. "Like I said in the beginning, we haven't been completely honest with you. Not everyone is a fit. So we keep some things a little close to the vest at the start.
"That stops now. You're all here because you're valued. Vetted. Trusted. There's a lot of work to do, and we think each of you can help. It's why you're here. We really do need your help, by the way. This is an introduction to what we mean by that.
"If I may, I'd like to begin by showing you a short video clip. It was recorded about a year and a half ago. Days after opening the doors to this building, in fact. Just before my time. One of our founders, Max Caulfield, gave a short opening speech to kick off our annual confab. Keynote, I guess. It sets a stage anyway. You'll have questions, but hold them til the end please? I promise we'll get to all of them.
"Lights?"
Max poured herself a coffee as Chloe wrapped up the replay. "How are the families doing?" she asked.
Sophie, a fellow late arrival, answered. "Everyone is in good physical condition. Marietta and Nessa were picked up by family members and taken home Friday afternoon. Antonio left Saturday with a regrown finger, and Blanca's parents picked her up Saturday as well."
"What kind of shape are they in emotionally, I mean?" Max asked.
"And what are they likely to say to others about their time here?" piped in Jillian.
"They're as expected, with exceptions. And it's unclear right now, Jillian. They're all processing the physical trauma, feelings of helplessness, loss of agency, guilt that they're somehow responsible for the attack, and guilt for the legal situation their loved ones currently face. It's a lot at once. We've connected each of them with therapists who specialize in post-event victim trauma, our retainer, but they've all declined for now."
"And the exceptions?"
"Mixed. Blanca is the one I'm a little concerned about. She doesn't have a great support structure at home. Her brother was her world, and she's feeling deeply responsible for his recent choices. She's somewhat adrift without him. I'll check in on her myself this week. As for Antonio, this isn't the worst he's seen, so he has a certain resilience. Marietta has already moved past their experience, convinced herself this was all the work of God…"
"Well, from a certain perspective…" Chloe winked.
Max sent a lazy smack sideways toward her, rolled her eyes.
Sophie continued. "…still worried for her husband, of course. Their daughter Nessa was spared from anything beyond fear and confusion of the moment. With her mother behaving as usual, she's mostly returned to her childhood norms. That may change as her father's absence becomes more apparent."
"Please, keep an eye on them. Quietly. I'd like us to help if needed." said Max.
"As far as any of them are concerned, we've already done more than they deserved. They don't fully understand why. It's not lost on them that we were the targets in all of this, and still, our first instinct was to come to their aid…"
"Anyone would have…"
"You know that's not true, Max."
"Should be."
Chloe jumped back in. "So…on a related note, we've got a drone sitting on the asshats who killed my motorcycle. And, you know, I guess, blew up a street and stuff. Um. Aside from trips to the store, they haven't done much. PlayStation, mostly. We'll give 'em another couple of days to see if they have useful contact with anyone before handing 'em off to LVPD."
"You don't want us to bring them in? Talk to them yourself?" asked John.
"Won't bring my bike back. And I'd prolly hit one of them. Hard. So… know your boundaries, right?"
"Fair enough." John agreed.
Max swiveled, asked Sophie, "Any word on Alena and her dad? How are they doing?"
"They're okay for now. Keeping a low profile at home. HR is on the hunt for a position for him as of this morning. I'm sure they'll find an excuse to get in touch within a week, get him to come in. We'll keep an eye on that too. I don't know if anyone outside has identified her yet though - Jillian?"
"Not as of this morning. Our folks are tracking the conversations, so if it breaks, we'll send you an alert. Well, not you Chloe, obviously…"
"Thanks - please. And uh, switching topics - here's a fun fact. Margaret was able to learn from the intake scans which specific dickheads were responsible for abusing Marietta, Antonio and Blanca. She called them out in the files. So, yay. That was bugging me."
"Saw that. John, I can work with you to package up all the electronic evidence for the locals and the DA on this. I have the archive of all the shit we pulled last Thursday to find them."
"Perfect. Thanks, Chloe. Just need to stick to their forensic protocols so they can show chain of custody. Any guess on when we'll be turning them over?"
Max answered, "A week maybe? Margaret said she'd need at least that long to take inventory, see if any are holding on to interesting secrets. And make recommendations on which to warn and release, and which should be released directly into custody. Or any she might want to hang onto for longer."
"Okay. If it's alright with everyone, I'd like to give the chief a heads-up that we have these guys, along with any names we have so his people aren't wasting cycles trying to ID or apprehend them. If I do that though, he'll definitely expect something from us next week."
"Fine with me. Any objections? No? Yeah. Sure. Go ahead."
"So what have we learned about these guys in general so far? Or about The Device? That's…what we're calling it, right?" asked John. "What else did Margaret get?"
Tracey noted that the lights dimmed on their own, like the elevator had responded to Sophie. The wall behind Hank came to life. Recorded video. A small podium on a small stage. Weird edit. Max appeared suddenly behind it. Paused for a moment as though collecting her thoughts.
"…So first, hi everyone. Um. Most of you know, I'm Max Caulfield. I'm the MC in MCCP…"
Tracey watched as Max did her intro. John was there in the audience. Camera panned when she mentioned him. So he was here at the beginning. She didn't follow everything Max was saying, missed a few of the references. She carries herself differently on a stage. More presence than I'd have thought.
"…In the past six months…you and your teammates brought four species back from the edge, while others beside you have saved literally tens of thousands of human lives around the world…"
Does she mean that literally? Tracey looked at Hank. He nodded, but held his hand out low in a subtle 'wait', while he looked back to the screen. Max went on for a bit more, until a line appeared in the air over her head.
"…This is why I'm here. This end is today, July 10th, 2014. That end is October, 2338. …each of those dots, circles, represents a future historical event. Each pixel is a million dead…"
And now for the tabloid alarmism…
"…We're trying to save ten billion people from extinction."
Bringing water to children and clean energy production are worthy activities, but these scare tactics are overplayed…
Lines, blocks, areas drew in over the timeline.
Green. "Biodiversity…"
Red. "Wars. Global conflicts."
Yellow. "Disease. Bacterial. Viral. Weaponized and natural."
Magenta. "Global temperatures."
Cyan. "Number of people alive on earth…Low point? Ten million souls. Total. Global."
Blue. "Natural disasters."
Purple. "Number of people living beyond earth. That line never rises above ten."
Everything faded, zoomed in to a short white line over her head.
"…This is the past six months. That white line? That's us." The display zoomed out again. "Everything that's not on that white line — that's preventable. Addressable. Solvable. We're the only ones standing between now - and then. That's why we're here."
The video ended. Paused on the final frame as lights came back up. The room was quiet.
Tracey couldn't help but break the silence. "It's all a bit apocalyptic, isn't it?" Max, and presumably Chloe, were clearly young and eccentric. Idealistic. But this tipped off into cult-like territory. Which…might explain a few things…
Hank didn't acknowledge the question. Looked out over the new hires with raised eyebrows. Inviting other thoughts.
Mary finally spoke. "As a geneticist, a biologist, I don't think this kind of trending is impossible. I can't speak to wars and disasters or some of the others, but I've seen similar charts on biodiversity loss estimates at least. Not quite that quickly, but the curves were similar… It's been going on for a while now."
Davide added, "I don't know. It makes sense to me. The point isn't the specific numbers anyway. It's all subjective. The point is that on our current path, we go sooner, rather than later. But why not? Everything has a time. Everything dies. Most things that have lived are dead. Why should we be different? We're not special. What? We're not. In astronomy, there's the question of life outside earth. There is a famous equation from the 1960's, maybe not so famous to everyone here, I guess? Made by a man named Frank Drake. You can plug values into it - how many stars, how many planets, how many with liquid water and so on - and in the end, it gives you the number of intelligent civilizations we should be seeing in the night skies. Even with very low assumptions, space is still very, very big, yeah? There should be thousands of advanced civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy alone right now. Maybe millions with different numbers. It should be noise everywhere. Crowded. But…we hear nothing. It's the Fermi paradox. Where is everyone? So there's this other theory - it says that there must be some filter. To explain this emptiness. Something that prevents intelligent life - exceptionally rare to start with, maybe - from advancing beyond a certain point before going extinct. Something common that keeps all life in the universe from moving out to the stars. Some think diseases. Inevitable eco-collapse as few resources are used by so many. Or that mostly aggressive species are the ones to reach primacy, and at a certain level of advancement, they all discover how to split the atom and it's just a matter of time for them. Whatever. This, I wouldn't find surprising. This could easily be our great filter." He motioned to the still image of the plots over Max's head.
Don spoke up after a moment. "Why October of 2338? It seems arbitrary, but it's not random, is it?"
Hank leaned back. "Thank you for your thoughts everyone. And that's very astute, Mr. O'Connell. No, it's not random. And for the record - those aren't projections. They're the real numbers. At least…real numbers from the future of an alternate timeline. You'll note that she was speaking of these things as though they were in the past. Sorry. Big reveal. There's a bit of a time travel thing in the middle of all of this we should maybe talk about next…"
Tracey threw her bag over her shoulder, got up to leave. "Oh, for fuck's sake…" That was enough.
"Miss Wells, if it's any consolation, the time travel isn't actually the weirdest part?"
She stared. They were obviously taking the piss out of her. Or literally batshit insane. Either way, she'd heard enough nonsense for one day. This wasn't going to help her understand John. Or New Year's. Or…maybe it did in a weird sort of way?
Hank interrupted her thoughts on her way to the door.
"You were shot, right? New Year's?"
She stopped. "Yes. At least I…"
"If you leave - and you're welcome to do so, as long as you're mindful of the NDAs you signed - you'll be leaving without the answers you came here for."
She laughed. "These aren't answers though, are they? This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry - it is."
"I swear to you, one human being to another, it's not. I think a part of you knows that. You've experienced it firsthand. Maybe you didn't recognize it at the time. Not asking for faith, Miss Wells. This is just an orientation. The grassy edge of the rabbit hole. Pick your metaphor. There's more on the other side. You have questions. I have some of the answers. They'll have more. We look for the rest together. Don't you want to know? Even if the answer turns out to be that we're all just nuts?"
He turned to Davide. "Mr. Duboque - you're a legitimate expert. Is there anything you know that says time travel is impossible?"
"Well, not explicitly, no. Time is just another direction. Relative. We travel at a different rate when we're in motion, when we're under the influence of gravity… But a machine that moves people back and forth in time, probably not. It's very unlikely to happen."
"But not impossible?"
"No, it's not expressly forbidden, as long as you don't violate causality. If you believe what you're suggesting, that list there would appear to do just that. That's the only flaw with this idea. And the energies needed, of course."
"Well, you'll recall I did say 'alternate'. Helps if you think of it like a virtual timeline maybe? I mean, it was real. For her, I mean, before…"
"Her?" asked Michelle.
"Right. Jumped ahead. Sorry. I meant Mrs. Caulfield."
Tracey stifled a laugh, threw out her arms as she edged closer to the door. "So you're trying to tell me that Max Caulfield truly believes she's from the future?"
"Not exactly. No. Pretty sure she's from Oregon. Born in '95, I think. But she lived through all of that up there. They both did. There's some sort of longevity thing going on too. It's not important. She's lived a few hundred years by calendar. Then she came back."
Incredulous at the audacity of the whole thing, Tracey rolled her eyes and asked, "So Max and Chloe came back from the future to what? Warn us all of impending doom? It's ridiculous! I mean, come on. They're barely past school age. You're obviously having at us…"
"Well, technically only Max came back. Chloe's situation is more…complicated I guess. I'm sure they'll fill in the gaps. But ask yourself, Miss Wells. You're an expert in your own right. Art history. Ancient cultures. Rapa Nui. Mayans. Harappan. Catalhoyuk. Those are just the ones that left a trace. What happened to them? I'm guessing most of the people thought everything was great, right up until the point where it wasn't. Is it so outlandish that we could be facing the same? And setting aside for the moment whether any of what I'm saying about this timeline stuff is factual, are the threats to us here and now any less predictable or real? Can you honestly look at the world, through your own lens of education and historical understanding, and say that we're heading in a good direction?"
"Yes, but you're talking about peoples you've cherry picked from pre-history through to the middle ages. On a vastly different population and mobility scale."
"I don't know. I mean, at one point, the Harappan was home to about ten percent of the world's population…"
"And the dissolution happened over many years. The people were scattered, not entirely lost. Rainfall, climate…"
"And Rapa Nui was trees. Used up the land. Unsustainable. I could go on. But you're an intelligent person. You can see the patterns. Changes in climate. Unsustainable farming practices. Resource depletion. Warfare. Disease. Sounds kinda familiar. Is it so bad to want to head that off for ourselves? Cause you're right. The devastation in the modern world would be on a vastly different scale. The toll in suffering mostly unimaginable to us in this room… I was upset on the drive in this morning. My latte wasn't the right temperature, but I didn't realize it until I was back on the road. I mean, how messed up is that? I can't begin to comprehend any of this. Not really. But I've heard them talk about it. They lived through it. Our resident SEAL knows. That faraway look. The way the voice slows, drops. You've seen it before. Am I right? So they came back to try to take us somewhere different. Assembled the resources, the facilities, the teams, and they're giving all of us an opportunity to share in their burden."
Tracey tried to interrupt. "But…"
Hank continued. "Even if I believed this whole thing was pure fantasy…hell, I'm on board. I don't have a better plan. Try to leave everything in better shape than when we got here. That's the deal, right? I can't do any better than try. None of us can. But I believe we have to do that much, at least. And being here feels like the most serious shot we've got."
"And my leg? Where I was shot? What about that?" Last chance.
"I wasn't kidding when I said time travel wasn't the weirdest part. I believe you were probably shot. I don't know for sure what happened to you after that. I can ask later. So can you. But I can think of three ways it might have been done in the field without tools or anesthesia. None would leave a scar. There's no magic, Miss Wells. Only things we don't yet understand. Give us a chance to help you understand. This goes for the rest of you too, by the way."
Tracey slowly sat back down. Different chair. Closer to the door. This was all crazy. She didn't believe a bit of it. But…that didn't make their goals wrong. Was it any crazier than other belief systems she'd studied? Not that anyone here could really believe any of this either, of course.
She'd play along for an hour or two.
They'd all have a laugh about this over drinks later.
"Miss Wells, everyone - I know this is a lot to take in. So let's take a break for a few. I think they're bringing in snacks. Coffee and tea, sodas will be in the back. Restroom's down the hall. Let's come back in 5? When we do, we'll spend some time familiarizing you with the taxonomy of talents. Then a little bit of history. Go over our areas of current focus, and give you a sense of where we are in the optimal future timeline. Context, big picture. Then we'll go walkabout so you can see a few things people are working on firsthand... Introduce you around."