2090, in the vicinity of Callisto
"Well, this is it. You ready, Virdon?"
The ship had been decelerating for the last three hours; they would reach the coordinates of the jump point in about two minutes, according to the ship-wide countdown. Chris liked the Daedalus' engineer well enough — Williams was a laid-back guy who was usually content to focus on his part of the engine deck and not engage in small talk. Too bad he didn't stick to his usual silence now, but Chris had to admit the occasion probably justified it.
Still, he wished Williams would leave him alone; his brain was fried enough without having to divert processing capacity to maintaining a cool facade.
"As ready as I'll ever be," he choked out. His palms were sweating.
Williams nodded. "Better check your calculations again," he teased.
Chris turned towards his console, away from the engineer's grin. "My calculations are correct. Already checked them a million times."
Which was true; during the Daedalus' nine-month trip to Callisto, there hadn't been much else to do than to pour over the data professor Hasslein had salvaged from the Icarus' doomed mission, and to re-do the calculations for their own jump both by hand and with the help of the ship's computer. Williams was the ship's engineer; Chris was only the mission specialist, and his job was to operate the Hasslein Ring, and nothing else.
The results had always matched; there wasn't the slightest discrepancy between those endlessly repeated calculations. So why was he feeling so scared?
It's just because I've waited so long for this moment to happen. I've waited for it all my life. And all my life, people have tried to make me doubt myself, doubt the professor... doubt Dad's promise.
Dad's alive. I know he is. And I will find him.
Not for the first time, the realization hit him that his father would be only a few years older than him when they'd meet. No matter how often it happened, it always made him feel dizzy. In a way, he wouldn't find his father; the age gap that would endow Alan Virdon with that paternal aura had melted away, and at best, he'd be a respected... what? Peer?
Friend?
Chris felt his uneasiness soar at that thought. He didn't want a friend; he wanted his dad back, even if his dad would be... very young now.
He shook his head. No time for that thought spiral; he had more important things to focus on now.
"Bridge to Mr. Virdon. We've reached your coordinates. Ship's at your disposal now," Cmdr. Kimura's voice came over the intercom. "Take good care of her," she added, and Chris thought he could detect a trace of worry in that cool voice.
"I will," he assured her. "Hope everyone's strapped in. Powering up the Hasslein Ring in three, two, one..."
Williams cut the power to the HCF couplers; while the magnetic containment field was still up — and would stay that way, as a safety measure — the plasma injectors fell silent, and into that silence, the low whine of the Hasslein Field Generators rose until they sounded like a choir of impossibly deep voices.
Chris and Williams shared a look. Nobody on the Daedalus had ever witnessed the HFG in operation; it had only been taken on a real, physical test run once, during the development of the Icarus project, and even then, they had stopped the engines before they could open a wormhole, because that wasn't something you wanted to try while still on your homeworld. All subsequent tests had been computer simulations. So, none of the crew had known what sound it would produce. It didn't console Chris to see his own awe and fear mirrored in the engineer's face.
"The damn thing sounds unholy," Williams commented with an uneasy laugh. "Hope it doesn't hurl us into some demon dimension."
"Bullshit." Chris activated the jump sequence and reached for his seatbelt. "But if you don't want to get hurled into a bulkhead, you better take a seat now, too. We'll be out of this world in about ten seconds." He didn't bother to watch if Williams heeded his friendly advice; his eyes were glued to the screen in front of him, while he silently counted down the seconds.
It was over in the blink of an eye, which he'd known, but which was still disappointing. While time and space bent around them, the ship itself stayed safely ensconced in its four-dimensional bubble of space-time, falling through the wormhole like a stone falling down a well. For a moment, Chris wished he'd at least been able to be on the bridge during transit, to watch the visual distortions on the screen. He'd replay them later, but it wouldn't be the same—
"Bridge to Engineering. Congratulations, Mr. Virdon, we've emerged in one piece, and by the looks of it, in Earth's orbit."
Williams, already out of his seat, loomed above him, offering him a high-five. Chris, still dazed by their success, returned it absently.
They... they had done it. Really done it. They were at the same point in time and space as the Icarus. The Daedalus would immediately begin to scan the surface, listening for a signal from the crashed sister ship; if they didn't find one, they would decouple the ship from the Hasslein Ring and land at the coordinates of the crash that the professor had calculated, and continue their search on the ground.
Nobody knew how Hasslein had arrived at those coordinates, and he had always evaded the question, only pointing out that if no signal was emitted, it had to mean the ship had to be underwater, but that this wouldn't necesarily mean that the crew was lost, too; they could've made it to the shore.
Chris didn't mind his mentor's secretiveness, if it would only lead him to his father. He trusted Hasslein — he had no reason not to.
When the intercom piped up again during his next shift, Chris fully expected to hear that they had found the Icarus. Instead, Kimura was even more curt than usual. "Mr. Virdon, please report to the bridge."
There it was again — that claw tightening around his stomach. Chris leaned forward in his seat. "Is something wrong, Commander?"
"Have a look yourself, Virdon, then you tell me."
No mention of the Icarus. Something had gone wrong. Something... but what...? His palms were sweating again. He pushed himself out of his seat with more force than necessary, to make up for the weakness he felt in his legs.
On his way to the exit, Chris caught William's eye.
'Demon dimension', the engineer mouthed silently.
"Mr. Virdon," Cmdr. Kimura nodded towards the main screen. "In your expert opinion, does this look like North America, 1075 A.D.?"
It sounded like a rethoric question, and the implications of that...
Chris looked around the bridge, taking in the other crew members' expressions. Simmons, the pilot, didn't meet his eye, but continued to stare at his own screen with a stony expression. Dr. Misra was chewing on her fingernails, also avoiding his gaze.
Reluctantly, he stepped closer to peer at the screen.
"This... doesn't look like North America..." He didn't know what else to say. The continent below looked disturbingly unfamiliar — not like any landmass he knew.
Another long moment of silence passed, as he took in the mountain ranges of what Kimura had claimed was their home. They did look familiar — but that only deepened the wrongness of the rest.
"The coastlines are... wrong," he added.
"They are indeed," Kimura said. She tapped the screen, and another image appeared as a transparent overlay, this time with the correct outline, and suddenly, the continent below them became familiar, if severely diminished.
The southeastern peninsula of Florida was almost completely gone. The entire West Coast had shifted eastward, swallowing California, the Gulf of Mexico had expanded northward...
"I don't recall any mentions of higher sea levels at that time from our history books," Kimura prodded him, when he didn't offer an explanation.
"There aren't any," Chris admitted quietly. "Sea levels have been rising and falling throughout Earth's history, but not at that point in time. You're right, I'm afraid." He felt sweat breaking out over his whole body. "We didn't arrive at our target coordinates... at least not at the temporal ones."
The silence on the bridge was deafening. Chris didn't know if he should be grateful that nobody berated him. His colleagues were too professional to break into hysterical rants, but that didn't mean they weren't holding him responsible for this mess. He was the mission specialist; taking them to their correct destination was his responsibility.
"I've been going over our calculations countless times," he said helplessly. "I didn't detect any flaws, neither did anyone from professor Hasslein's team—"
"Well, something did go wrong," Kimura interrupted him. "I don't care whose mistake it was, Virdon, that's for ANSA to figure out once we're back. But in order to get home, we need to know where we are — or rather, when — and then figure out how to get back, and this time come out at the right end of the wormhole."
"I'll get to it right away," Chris assured her. "I need everything you surveyed so far, to figure out where... uh, when... we ended up—"
"Of course."
With that, he was dismissed. Cmdr. Kimura was a woman who didn't waste energy on unnecessary words or friendly gestures, but Chris had found her crisp efficiency comforting. If anyone could lead them out of this fuckup without losing their nerve, it was her. No, the shame he felt was entirely self-inflicted. He turned to go.
"Mr. Virdon, one other thing."
When he looked over his shoulder, he was taken aback by the quiet worry in her eyes. "Yes, Commander?"
"We weren't able to detect any major settlements down there. Any... signs of a technologically advanced civilization." Her gaze flitted to the screen and back to him. "On any continent. You may want to take that into consideration while doing your calculations."
His heart started beating hard and fast, as if it knew something about the implications of her words that he didn't. Or didn't want to contemplate. His mouth went dry. "Thank you. I will."
Someone said something under their breath as the door was closing behind him — Simmons? — but Chris couldn't make out the words. All things considered, he didn't want to know what the pilot had to say. The voice in his head was scathing enough.