The Bellbottom Incident (34 page)

“Well, all right then. Bring back video footage and photos.”

And I would.

The professor’s voice broke through my fantasy. “Julia? When is Dean Braga halting all runs?”

“Immediately.”

He gently flicked a metal shaving off the Slingshot 3.0. “I expect she’ll ask me to hold off on my work on this as well.”

“It didn’t come up in our talk, but I expect so. Where did it come from, Xavier? The Slingshot? Version 1.0 that you had back in Pompeii, and Version 2.0? And that one? Did you really design and build them?”

“I never said I did, not exactly,” he said, his voice quiet. “As a matter of fact, I found the blueprints for the first one in the lab the day I made the decision that I would go to Pompeii. There, on that chair. The blueprints had a note on them that said,
Build and take me along
. I obeyed. At first I thought it was meant for me, as an aid in my plan to document the ancient Roman lifestyle. I tested it up and down the Pompeii coast, trying to figure out how it worked—discovered it had a propensity for dropping me into ghost zones if I strayed from the handful of destinations I had programmed into it, like Rome.”

“You said the engineering department had designed the battery.”

“They probably did, just in the future.”

“And that you had figured out how to splinter off a Mooney-shaped piece of STEWie’s basket to get it to work.”

“I decided it’d be best for everyone if I sounded like I knew what I was doing, rather than the truth, that I was winging it. I later realized that the Slingshot generated a basket on its own. In any case, we ended up using it to get out of Pompeii. I think we were meant to.”
 

So someone had come up with a rescue plan—for us to use the Slingshot to jump to Rome and in due time meet up with Dr. May and return to St. Sunniva that way. But I had needed antibiotics—fast—and so we had done the foolhardy thing and used the unfamiliar device to jump all the way home. “And Version 2.0?” I asked.

“The blueprints arrived during the summer. It was an improvement. I discovered that Slingshot 2.0 was more stable and could go with or against the arrow of time, as you know.”

“So all this while, when you’ve been tinkering with the Slingshot…the tests around campus…what were you really doing?”
 

“Trying to figure out why it works, with little luck so far. I think what it does is let travelers glide along the links that exist between the past and the present—and the future.” He turned his palms upward, as if physically admitting the limits of his knowledge on the matter.
 

The Slingshot 1.0 was lying in bits and pieces on the worktable in front of him. I carefully touched a small half sphere, whose function I couldn’t begin to guess at. It was simultaneously squishy and very smooth. “When you said you were trying to build Version 3.0 for us take along to the fourteenth century, was that all a farce?”

“It would have been a duplicate of Version 2.0. I think—no, I’m
guessing
—that it’s all Abigail’s doing. I don’t know for sure.”
 

My head shot up. “Abigail sent you the blueprints for the Slingshot?”

“Not our Abigail, the future Abigail. The one who has her degree. The one who’s perhaps a tenured professor in charge of the lab. As I said, I don’t know anything for sure—it’s just a feeling. But I figured one of us from Pompeii had to have sent me the Slingshot in the first place. You know, to rescue us.”

I scratched my head, somewhat stunned by his words. “Are you saying future Abigail saved herself and us by getting the Slingshot into your hands? But that doesn’t make sense.” I clutched the sides of my head, trying to reason it out. “If Abigail and the rest of us
had
been killed in Pompeii, there would have been no future Abigail to rescue us.”

“I think she was the only one of us who originally made it out of the town alive, on foot, and got home safe after meeting up with Dr. May’s group on their STEWie run to Rome.”

“Even if that’s the case, the future Abigail couldn’t change History—you know that. It’s more than a rule—it’s an unyielding cornerstone.”

“Is it?
We
can’t change History, but
they
may have figured out how to. I’m talking about the next generation of occupants of this lab, or whatever stands in its place.” The professor gestured around him. “Besides, if my hypothesis is correct, Abigail would have only been changing
our
role in the past, not the past itself. We didn’t belong there anyway.” He added thoughtfully, ”I wonder if the older Abigail anticipated that we would bring Sabina back.”

“And Version 2.0?”

“I think that was meant for fixing what happened this week, to find Sabina in 1976, and whoever sent it didn’t expect that it would get used for a joyride to the fourteenth century by Quinn and Dr. Holm.”

I stared at him wordlessly. Could it be true? If we hadn’t had the Slingshot 1.0 in Pompeii, we wouldn’t have made it out alive. If we hadn’t had the Slingshot 2.0 in 1976, we wouldn’t have been able to jump around Fort Myers so easily, instead relying on the unstable Version 1.0. Even with the Slingshot by our side, it had been a close call.

As for the designer of the Slingshots…he or she was a serious out-of-the-box thinker. Abigail had shown herself to be inventive when needed. She had the same cheerful disregard for rules as Dr. Mooney and was as fearless as he when it came to taking the unbeaten path. It’s where she felt most comfortable.

“Do you have any proof of this, Professor? That it’s Abigail, or any of it?”

“None whatsoever. But there’s a familiar touch to the design of the two Slingshots. The simultaneous elegance and scrappiness of it is all Abigail, if you will.”

 
I sighed. “I guess we’ll have to be patient and wait to find out what happens. Will happen.”

“Unless we’re dead by then. I suspect I will be. If so, I’m content to know that Abigail will carry the torch and the lab will continue to thrive.”

We left it at that. I turned to go, pondering that it was like knowing we were all headed toward a real-life CSI, one where all truths would finally become known. I stopped with one hand on the lab door. The professor had slid his goggles back on and recommenced tinkering with the Slingshot 3.0.

“Anything else you know that the rest of us don’t, Dr. Mooney? Was 1976 the only time we unexpectedly popped up in the past?”

“Hmm? Yes, Julia—you know everything I know,” he said without looking up.
 

“Well, all right then.”

I took the lakeside path from Time Travel Engineering back to Hypatia House, lingering to watch the ducks waddling on the shore. I found myself reluctant to go back to my office, to do what had to be done.
 

Hold on—

Did
it have to be done? If Dr. Mooney was right, the lab would reopen one day with Abigail in charge. Maybe that meant we needed to fight to keep it open
now
. Maybe it meant
I
needed to fight to keep it open.

But how?

A student texting as she biked along almost ran me over and I called out after her, “Don’t bike and text!” as much for her safety as mine. I don’t think she heard.
 

I had been as guilty as the others. Like Dean Braga, I’d wanted to use STEWie to settle a personal concern, an issue important only to me. What on earth had led me to conclude that digging around in the past was a better course of action than asking my parents outright? I had wanted to save them some embarrassment—and myself as well—and I’d thought the answer would be easily found in 1976. Answers rarely were, of course.
 

There was nothing we could do about human nature. But there
was
something we could do about the way we approached time travel. The focus thus far had been on funds, academic merit, how to soothe wounded feelings over who would get a roster spot and who wouldn’t. There was a fourth side to the square, one that had been overlooked. Because what did we, as a society, do to counter human nature and the tendency to make bad choices, cheat, steal, or take more than our share? That unexciting enemy of chaos—laws—usually boiled down to the administrative and bureaucratic enforcement of them. And administration was a job in which I had a lot of practice.
 

 
Feeling suddenly energized, I ran up the path of Hypatia House, passing Dr. B, who gave me a startled look on her way out, and burst into my office.

I slid into the desk and grabbed a notepad and a pen.
 

(1)
Pairs.

A single professor and his or her grad students just did not cut it, because of the power imbalance. Professors would have to go on STEWie runs in pairs, like Dr. Mooney and Dr. Rojas originally had. No one would approve of the arrangement, especially not the senior professors, who were tenured and used to being free of oversight. I foresaw much arguing and many wounded egos. It had to be done, however.

(2)
An oath.

Having travelers sign an oath of professionalism wouldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be any shenanigans, but it was a step in the right direction. I assumed that new police officers at campus security had to do something similar. I’d have to ask Nate about it.

(3)
Retiring the Slingshots.

That one made me pause for a bit, but I felt it was the right course of action. If the two versions had been sent from the future to help us out in Pompeii and 1976, then we shouldn’t be repurposing them for other matters. Simple and straightforward meant using just STEWie, the method we had earned. The Slingshots would appear in their proper time; Dr. Mooney would have to find a new subject matter to focus his talents on.

I sat back and eyed the short list. It was not a groundbreaking idea, but it was a start. And it might just work, I thought.
 

Now I needed to sell Dean Braga on it.
 

I called Nate to enlist his help.

He agreed at once. “There’s also a security loophole that needs fixing—I’ve long thought that too many people know the code to the TTE lab door. How did Sabina get in anyway?”

“She figured out the four-digit code from watching Abigail and Dr. Mooney go in and out of the lab so many times. She said it wasn’t hard.”

“That’s what I mean—we need a system in which the equipment can’t be accessed by a single person, per your
Pairs
point. Two sets of codes—or two lab keys—will help. The two-man rule.”

“Like for personnel who oversee nuclear launches.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll add that to my list as (4).”

There was another point, (5), one which I had been hesitant to add. “I also think we need an independent observer on each run—an overseer—someone who’s along for the ride only to make sure nothing goes wrong. Perhaps not another academic but a layperson. I was going to put it down on my list, only…”

“Only what?”

“I couldn’t tell if it belonged on the list or whether I merely wanted to put it there.”

“Because you’d be very happy to volunteer to serve as an overseer.”
 

“Well, yes.”

“Put it on your list.”
 

I did.
 

“Do you think this is the right thing to do, trying to continue on with the program?” I had never asked him his opinion on time travel. I wasn’t so foolish as to assume everyone was on board with it, even if he had never said one way or another.

He thought about it for a moment. Through the phone I could hear background chatter in the campus security office. He finally said, “The genie is out of the bottle, so I don’t think it matters what I think. But I’d say in general it’s better to know
more
about anything rather than less. Even if what’s revealed is not easy or pleasant or perfect, and that includes the world and our past.” He summarized: “Paired teams of professors, two sets of door codes to the lab, an overseer on each run…it sounds like an organizational nightmare. You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you?”

“You bet I am.”

Nine months was how long it took to get everything sorted enough to satisfy Dean Braga, Chancellor Evans, and the board of trustees. It was longer than it took for the media interest in Sabina to die down, her story long since replaced by the latest celebrity scandals.
 

We’d implemented all the rules on my list. I had been given a promotion and was now heading an oversight committee. I thought that Time Travel Overseer had a certain ring to it, but my official job description was a little more mundane—and longer. I was the Time Travel Engineering Laboratory Oversight Committee Chairperson. There were six of us—none of us academics, purposely—and our job was to tag along on runs to keep everyone honest. I was in charge of organizing things.

My first run—the first run to be conducted in nine months—was to be tomorrow, with Dr. Baumgartner. We were going to Marie Curie’s childhood home in Poland. Perhaps not as exciting as a Neanderthal visit might have been, but exciting enough. There was a lot to get done before then.

Everyone was getting together at my house for a little celebratory dinner. Sabina’s first year at the Thornberg high school was over—she had done well despite all the publicity that had ensued after our news conference. We still had reporters calling about it once in a while, but the high school students had reacted much more levelheadedly than I had expected and had rallied around Sabina. Nate had been at the news conference, and he’d been an invaluable support system for Sabina when she needed it. He’d helped so much in getting the overseer program up and running that I felt he deserved an honorary title.