Zig Zag (27 page)

"The
science station is also horseshoe shaped, or maybe fork shaped,"
Valente explained, drawing in the air. "The first barracks is
closest to the heliport, and that's where the labs are; the second
one is the main artery, and that's where the screening room, dining
room, and kitchen—with a trapdoor down to the pantry—are;
and the third one is for the bedrooms. The perpendicular one is the
control room, or at least that's what they call it. I've only been in
there once, but man, it's
full
of
state-of-the-art computers and a fucking amazing particle
accelerator, a new kind of synchrotron. Right now we're going to the
screening room."

He
pointed to an open door on the left. She could hear people speaking
English. Until that moment, Elisa hadn't bumped into anyone. She
guessed the team was pretty small. Suddenly, Cheryl Ross appeared at
the door, dressed now in jeans and a T-shirt, but still sporting the
same hairdo and identical smile as last night. Elisa cast off her
Spanish as soon as she saw her.

"Good
morning!" Ross sang. "I was just coming to find you! The
boss doesn't want to get started until we're all here; you know how
he is ... How was your first night on New Nelson?"

"Slept
like a log," Elisa lied.

"I'm
glad."

The
room looked like a home theater, set up for twelve. Seating consisted
of three rows of chairs, and there was a console with keyboard on one
wall and a ten-foot screen on the other.

But
Elisa was more interested in the people. They all stood up and made a
tremendous racket in the process, their chairs scraping the floor.
Then there was a frenzy of handshaking and cheek kissing when Valente
introduced her as "the missing member." Forced to think in
English, Elisa just let herself be carried along by the course of
events.

She
recognized Colin Craig, a young, good-looking man with short hair,
round glasses, and a neat beard. She remembered that the beautiful
woman with long brown hair was Jacqueline Clissot, who was quite
reserved and only held out her hand. Nadja Petrova, the girl with
albino hair, on the other hand, was downright effusive. She gave her
an affectionate kiss and made her laugh by attempting to say, "I'm
a paleontologist, too," in Spanish.

"Pleased
to meet you," she said, adding,
"Me
alegro de conocerte,"
and
Elisa truly appreciated the girl's effort to speak her language.

Valente,
unsurprisingly, made a big song and dance of introducing the other
lady, a skinny, mature woman with a gaunt, lined face and a big
freckled nose. He threw his arm over her shoulder with forced
camaraderie, causing her to flash an embarrassed smile.

"Allow
me to introduce you to Rosalyn Reiter of Berlin, Reinhard Silberg's
beloved disciple; she studied history and philosophy of science and
currently specializes in a very remarkable field."

"Which
one?"

"History
of Christianity," Rosalyn Reiter replied.

Although
Elisa didn't change her chirpy, polite tone, her mind was definitely
elsewhere. Looking at the faces of the people she'd be working with,
she speculated.
Two
paleontologists and a Christian historian... What does that mean?
Just
then, Craig pointed at something.

"And
here comes the Counsel of Wise Men."

David
Blanes, Reinhard Silberg, and Sergio Marini filed in. Marini closed
the door behind him.

It
reminded Elisa of some sort of selection committee, sitting around
deciding everyone's fate. Who will go to heaven and who gets
expelled. Who earns eternal glory and who stays here on earth. She
counted them: ten, herself included.

Ten
scientists. Ten chosen ones.

Everybody
sat down in silence. Only Blanes remained standing before them, his
back to the big screen. Elisa watched the papers he held flutter and
thought she must be dreaming.

Blanes
was trembling.

"Friends,
we waited until all the participants in Project Zig Zag were present
to give you the explanations that, no doubt, you've been waiting
for... But let me say this. Those of us who are here today in this
room can consider ourselves very fortunate. We're going to see things
no human has ever seen before. That's not an exaggeration. On some
occasions, we'll see things that no creature, living or dead, has
ever
seen,
since time immemorial..."

Elisa
got the chills. She was petrified.

The
sea I sail has never yet been passed.

She
sat up straight in her chair, preparing to dive, along with her nine
astonished colleagues, into the uncharted scientific waters that
would seal her fate.

PART
FOUR

The
Project

Everything
that is, is past.

ANATOLE
FRANCE

14

It
was almost there.

Those
eyes were the prelude.

Next
would come the shadow.

THOUGH
she
didn't know it yet, the darkest evil she would ever encounter in her
life had already been born. And it was just around the corner,
waiting for her.

SERGIO
Marini
was everything Blanes wasn't: elegant and seductive. Thin, with dark,
wavy hair, tan skin, a smooth shave, and a disarming smile, he knew
how to project his basso voice and captivate his Milanese students.
Born in Rome, he studied at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore
in Pisa, where bigwigs like Enrico Fermi had earned their PhDs in
physics. After the obligatory stint in the United States, Grossmann
had called him to Zurich, where he met Blanes, and together they
developed the sequoia theory. "Together" meant—in the
words Marini himself always used to refer to those years of
collaboration—that "I let him calculate in peace and
rushed over every time he wanted to tell me the results."

He
had something Blanes lacked: a sense of humor.

"One
night in 2001 we filled a glass to the halfway mark.

Then
we left it on the lab table for thirty hours straight. After the time
was up, David smashed it on the floor. That was as far as his actual
experimentation went." He looked at Blanes, who was laughing
along with everyone else. "Don't get upset, David. You're the
theoretician, I'm the hammer-and-nail man. Anyway ... our idea was
... Oh, you explain it. You're better at this stuff."

"No,
no, go ahead."

"Please,
you do it; you're the father."

"And
you're the mother."

Both
of them were trying to improvise, to put on a show, and it was pretty
much working. They were like a cheap cabaret act: the bumbler and the
wise guy; the lady-killer and the geek. Elisa watched them and could
relate to their years of solitary, fruitless toil, and the
uncontainable excitement at their first success.

"Well,
OK, looks like it's my turn," said Blanes. "Anyway, let's
see. As you know, the sequoia theory states that every particle of
light has time strings coiled up inside it like the rings in a
sequoia's trunk. Those that grow out from its center. The number of
strings is not infinite, but it is gigantic and inconceivable: it's
the number of Planck times that have transpired since the origins of
light..."

There
was some murmuring, and Marini whined, "Professor Clissot wants
to know what a Planck time is, David. Don't disregard those who
aren't physicists, even if they deserve to be!"

"A
Planck time is the smallest possible interval of time," Blanes
explained. "It's how long it takes for light to cross a distance
equal to a Planck length, which is the shortest length in existence.
To give you an idea, if a single atom were the size of the universe,
a Planck length would be the size of one tree. The time that it takes
light to cross that distance is called Planck time. It's
approximately one-septillionth of a second, and there is nothing in
the universe that takes
less
time
than that."

"You've
never seen Colin eating foie gras sandwiches," Marini quipped.
Craig raised his hand in acknowledgement. That was the first time
she'd ever seen Blanes burst out laughing, although he did get
serious again almost immediately after.

"Every
time string equates to one specific Planck time and contains
everything
that
was reflected by light in that briefest of intervals. With some
necessary mathematical adjustments to our equations (using local time
variables, for example), the theory told us it was possible to
isolate and identify the strings chronologically, even open them. It
didn't require a
lot
of
energy, but it did take an
exact
quantity.
Sergio called it 'supraselective.' If the appropriate supraselective
energy was used, the strings from a determined time period could be
opened, showing us the images from that period. Now then, this, of
course, was just a mathematical finding. And for over ten years,
that's all it was. But eventually, a team led by Professor Craig
designed the new synchrotron, and using it we were able to obtain the
kind of supraselective energy we needed. But we didn't get any
results until the night we broke that glass. You continue, Sergio.
This is the part you like."

"Well,
we videotaped the image of the broken glass and sent it to a particle
accelerator," Marini went on. "As you know, a video is
nothing but a beam of electrons. We accelerated those electrons to
obtain a level of energy that was stable to within a few decimals and
we made them collide with a stream of positrons. The resulting
particles should have contained the open strings from a period
equivalent to two hours before the breaking of the glass. We then
reconverted those particles into a new beam of electrons, made them
collide against a television screen, used a special software program
to profile the image. And when we turned on the screen, what did we
see?"