Flashforward

28

Time passes; things change.

In 2017, a team of physicists and brain researchers mostly based at Stanford devised a full theoretical model for the time displacement. The quantum-mechanical model of the human mind, proposed by Roger Penrose thirty years earlier, had turned out to be generally true even if Penrose had gotten many of the details wrong; it was perhaps not surprising, then, that sufficiently powerful quantum physics experiments could have an effect on perception.

Still, the neutrinos were a key part of it, too. It had been known since the 1960s that Earth's sun was, for some reason, disgorging only half as many neutrinos as it should — the famous "solar-neutrino problem."

The sun is heated by hydrogen fusion: four hydrogen nuclei — each a single proton — come together to form a helium nucleus, consisting of two protons and two neutrons. In the process of converting two of the original hydrogen-provided protons into neutrons, two electron neutrinos should be ejected… but, somehow one out of every two electron neutrinos that should reach Earth disappears before it does so, almost as if they were somehow being censored, almost as if the universe knew that the quantum-mechanical processes underlying consciousness were unstable if too many neutrinos were present.

The discovery in 1998 that neutrinos had a trifling mass had made credible a long-standing possible solution to the solar-neutrino problem: if neutrinos have mass, theory suggested that they could perhaps change types as they traveled, making it only appear, to primitive detectors, that they had disappeared. But the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which was capable of detecting all types of neutrinos, still showed a marked shortfall between what should be produced and what was reaching Earth.

The strong anthropic principle said the universe needed to give rise to life, and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics said it requires qualified observers; given what was now known about the interaction of neutrinos and consciousness, the solar-neutrino problem seemed to be evidence that the universe was indeed taking pains to foster the existence of such observers.

Of course, occasional extrasolar neutrino bursts happened, but under normal circumstances they could be tolerated. But when the circumstances were not normal — when a neutrino onslaught was combined with conditions that hadn't existed since just after the big bang — time displacement occurred.

In 2018, the European Space Agency launched the Cassandra probe toward Sanduleak—69 202. Of course, it would take millions of years to reach Sanduleak, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that now, in 2030, Cassandra was 2.5 trillion kilometers from Earth — and 2.5 trillion kilometers closer to the remnant of Supernova 1987A — a distance that light, and neutrinos, would take three months to travel.

Aboard Cassandra were two instruments. One was a light detector, aimed directly at Sanduleak; the other was a recent invention — a tachyon emitter — aimed back at Earth. Cassandra couldn't detect neutrinos directly, but if Sanduleak oscillated out of brown-hole status, it would give off light as well as neutrinos, and the light would be easy to see.

In July 2030, light from Sanduleak was detected by Cassandra. The probe immediately launched an ultra-low-energy (and therefore ultra-high-speed) tachyon burst toward Earth. Forty-three hours later, the tachyons arrived there, setting off alarms.

Suddenly, twenty-one years after the first time-displacement event, the people of Earth were given three months' notice that if they wanted to try for another glimpse of the future, they could indeed do so with a reasonable chance of success. Of course, the next attempt would have to be made at the exact moment the Sanduleak neutrinos would start passing through Earth — and it couldn't be a coincidence that that would be 19h21 Greenwich Mean Time on Wednesday, October 23, 2030 — the precise beginning of the two-minute span the last set of visions had portrayed.

The UN debated the matter with surprising speed. Some had thought that because the present had turned out to be different from what the first set of visions portrayed, people might decide that new visions would be irrelevant. But, in reality, the general response was quite the opposite — almost everybody wanted another peek at tomorrow. The Ebenezer Effect still was powerful. And, of course, there was now a whole generation of young people who had been born after 2009. They felt left out, and were demanding a chance to have what their parents had already experienced: a glimpse of their prospective futures.

As before, CERN was the key to unlocking tomorrow. But Lloyd Simcoe, now sixty-six, would not be part of the replication attempt. He had retired two years ago, and had declined to come back to CERN. Still, Lloyd and Theo had indeed shared a Nobel prize. It had been awarded in 2024, not, as it turned out, in honor of anything related to the time-displacement effect, or the Higg's boson, but rather due to their joint invention of the Tachyon-Tardyon Collider, the tabletop device that had put giant particle accelerators at places ranging from TRIUMF to Fermilab to CERN out of business. Most of CERN was abandoned now, although the original Tachyon-Tardyon Collider was housed on the CERN campus.

Maybe it was because Lloyd's marriage to Michiko had crumbled after ten years that Lloyd didn't want to be involved with this attempt to replicate the original experiment. Yes, Lloyd and Michiko had had a daughter together, but always, down deep, not even acknowledged by her at first, there was a feeling on Michiko's part that Lloyd had somehow been responsible for her first daughter's death. She'd surprised herself, no doubt, the first time that charge had come out during an argument between her and Lloyd. But there it was.

That Lloyd and Michiko loved each other there was no doubt, but they ultimately decided that they simply couldn't go on living together, not with that hanging, however diffusely, over everything. At least it hadn't been a painful divorce, like that of Lloyd's parents. Michiko moved back to Nippon, taking their daughter Joan with her; Lloyd got to visit with her only once a year, at Christmas.

Lloyd wasn't crucial to the replication of the original experiment, although his help would have been a real asset. But he was now happily remarried — and, yes, it was to Doreen, the woman he'd seen in his vision, and, yes, they did now own a cottage in Vermont.

Still, Jake Horowitz, who had long since left CERN to work at TRIUMF with his wife Carly Tompkins, did agree to come back for three months. Carly came as well, and she and Jake endured the gentle kidding of people asking them which labs at CERN they were going to baptize. They had been married for eighteen years now, and had three wonderful kids.

Theodosios Procopides and about three hundred other people still worked at CERN, running the TTC there. Theo, Jake, Carly, and a skeleton crew raced against time to get the Large Hadron Collider ready to run again, after five years of disuse, before the Sanduleak neutrinos hit.

29

Theo, now forty-eight, was personally delighted that the reality of 2030 had turned out to be different from what had been portrayed in the visions of 2009. For his own part, he'd grown a fine, full beard, covering his jutting jaw (and saving him from looking like he needed another shave by mid-afternoon). Young Helmut Drescher had said he could see Theo's chin in his vision; the beard was one of Theo's little ways of asserting his free will.

Still, as the replication date approached, Theo found himself growing more and more apprehensive. He tried to convince himself that it was nervousness about letting the whole world down again if something went wrong, but the LHC seemed to be operating perfectly, and so he had to admit that that wasn't really it.

No, what he was nervous about was the fact that the day on which the 2009 visions said he was going to die was rapidly approaching.

Theo found that he couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. If he had ever determined who it was who had originally wanted him dead, that would have perhaps made it easier — all he would have to do is avoid that person. But he had no idea who had/would/might pull the trigger.

Finally, inevitably, it was Monday, October 21, 2030: the date that, in at least one version of reality, was laser-carved into Theo's tombstone. Theo woke that morning in a cold sweat.

There was still oodles of work to be done at CERN — it was only two days until the Sanduleak neutrinos would hit. He tried to put it all out of his mind, but even after he got to the office, he found himself unable to concentrate.

And, by a little after 10h00, he couldn't take it anymore. Theo left the LHC control center, putting on a forward-swept beige cap and mirrored sunglasses as he did so. It wasn't all that bright out; the temperature was cool, and about half the sky was covered by clouds. But no one went outside without head and eye protection anymore. Although the depleting of the ozone layer had finally been halted, nothing effective had been done yet about building it back up.

Sun glinted off the rocky pinnacles of the Jura mountains. There was a Globus Gateway bus in the parking lot; mostly deserted CERN wasn't a starred attraction in the Guide Michelin, of course, and, with the hubbub surrounding the replication attempt, no tourists were allowed on site, anyway. This bus had been chartered to bring a crowd of journalists from the airport; they had flown in to cover the work leading up to the replication.

Theo walked over to his car, a red Ford Octavia — good, serviceable transportation. He'd spent his youth playing with billion-dollar particle accelerators; he hardly needed a fancy car to establish his worth.

The car recognized him as he approached, and he nodded at it to indicate he really did want to enter. The driver-side door slid up into the roof. You could still buy cars with doors that hinged out to the side, but with parking spaces so tight in most urban centers doors that required no special clearance were more convenient.

Theo entered the car and told it where he wanted to go. "At this time of day," said the car in a pleasant male voice, "it'll be fastest to take Rue Meynard."

"Fine," said Theo. "You drive."

The car began to do just that, lifting off the ground and starting on its way. "Music or news?" said the car.

"Music," said Theo.

The car filled with one of Theo's favorite bands, a popular Korean jag group. But the music did little to calm him. Dammit all, he knew he shouldn't even be here in Switzerland, but the Large Hadron Collider was still the biggest instrument of its type in the world; periodic attempts prior to the invention of the TTC to revive the Superconducting Supercollider project, killed by the U.S. Congress in 1993, had all failed. And running and repairing particle accelerators was a dying art. Most of those who had built the original LEP accelerator — the first one mounted in CERN's giant subterranean tunnel — were either dead or retired, and only a few of those involved with the LHC, which first went into service a quarter of a century ago, were still in that line of work. So: Theo's expertise was needed in Switzerland. But he was damned if he was going to be a sitting duck.

The car stopped outside the destination Theo had requested: Police Headquarters in Geneva. It was an old building — more than a century old, in fact, and although internal-combustion motors were illegal on any car manufactured after 2021, the building still showed the grime of decades of automobile exhausts; it would have to be sandblasted at some point.

"Open," said Theo. The door disappeared into the ceiling.

"There are no vacant parking spots within a five-hundred-meter radius," said the car.

"Keep driving around the block, then," said Theo. "I'll call you when I'm ready to be picked up."

The car chirped acknowledgment. Theo put on his cap and shades and stepped outside. He crossed the sidewalk, made his way up the steps, and entered the building.

"Bonjour," said a large blond man sitting behind a desk. "Je peux vous aider?"

"Oui," said Theo. "Detective Helmut Drescher, s'il vous plait." Young Helmut Drescher was indeed a detective now; Theo, with then-idle curiosity, had checked on that several months before.

"Moot's not in," said the man, still speaking in French. "Can somebody else help you?"

Theo felt his heart sink. Drescher, at least, might understand, but to try to explain it to a complete stranger… "I was really hoping to see Detective Drescher," said Theo. "Do you expect him back soon?"

"I really don't — oh, say, this must be your lucky day. There's Moot now."

Theo turned around. Two men both about the right age were entering the building; Theo had no idea which one might be Drescher. "Detective Drescher?" he said tentatively.

"That's me," said the one on the right. Helmut had grown up to be a fine-looking man, with light brown hair, a strong, square jaw, and bright blue eyes.

"Like I said," said the desk officer from behind Theo. "Your lucky day."

Only if I live through it, thought Theo. "Detective Drescher," said Theo, "I need to talk to you."

Drescher turned to the other man he'd come in with. "I'll catch up with you later, Fritz," he said. Fritz nodded and headed deeper into the building.

Drescher showed no sign of recognizing Theo. Of course, it had been twenty-one years since they'd last seen each other, and, although there had been a lot of media coverage of the upcoming attempt to replicate the time displacement, Theo had been way too busy to be interviewed much on TV lately; he'd been leaving that mostly to Jake Horowitz.

Drescher led Theo toward the inner doors; he was dressed in plain clothes, but Theo couldn't help noticing that he had very nice shoes. Drescher laid his hand on a palmprint reader and the paired doors swung inward, letting them into the squad room. Flatsies — paper-thin computers — were piled high on some desks and spread out in overlapping patterns on others. One entire wall was a map showing Geneva's computer-controlled traffic, with every vehicle tracked by an individual transponder. Theo looked to see if he could spot his own car orbiting the building; it seemed his wasn't the only one doing that just now.

"Have a seat," said Drescher, indicating the chair that faced his desk. He took a flatsie from a pile and placed it between him and Theo. "You don't mind if I record this?" he said. The words — French — instantly appeared as text on the flatsie, with an attribution tag saying, "H. Drescher."

Theo shook his head. Drescher gestured at the flatsie. Theo realized he wanted a spoken reply. "Non," he said. The flatsie duly recorded it, but simply put a glowing question mark where the speaker's name should be.

"And you are?"

"Theodosios Procopides," said Theo, expecting the name to ring a bell for Drescher.

The flatsie, at least, got it in one — indeed, Theo saw a little window appear on the sheet, showing the correct spelling of his name using the Hellenic alphabet and listing some basic facts about Theo. The attribution tags for the "Non," and the stating of his name immediately changed to "T. Procopides."

"And what can I do for you?" asked Drescher, still oblivious.

"You don't know who I am, do you?" said Theo.

Drescher shook his head.

"The, ah, last time we saw each other, I didn't have the beard."

The detective peered at Theo's face. "Well, I — oh! Oh, God! Oh, it's you!"

Theo glanced down. The flatsie had done a commendable job of punctuating the detective's outburst. When he looked back up, he saw that all the color had drained from Drescher's face.

"Oui," said Theo. "C'est moi."

"Mon Dieu," said Drescher. "How that's haunted me over the years." He shook his head. "You know, I've seen a lot of autopsies since, and a lot of dead bodies. But yours — to see something like that when you're just a kid." He shuddered.

"I'm sorry," said Theo. He paused for a moment, then: "Do you remember me coming to visit you, shortly after you had that vision? Out at your parents' house — the one with that great staircase?"

Drescher nodded. "I remember. Scared the life out of me."

Theo lifted his shoulders slightly. "I'm sorry about that, too."

"I've tried to keep that vision out of my mind," said Drescher. "All these years, I've tried not to think about it. But it still comes back, you know. Even after all I've seen, that image still haunts me."

Theo smiled apologetically.

"Not your fault," said Drescher, gesturing dismissively with his hand. "What was your vision of?"

Theo was surprised by the question; Drescher was still having trouble connecting his own vision of that dead body with the reality of the human being sitting in front of him. "Nothing," said Theo.

"Oh, yeah, right," said Drescher, slightly embarrassed. "Sorry."

There was awkward silence between them for a few moments, then Drescher spoke again. "You know, it wasn't all bad — that vision, I mean. It got me interested in police work. I don't know that I would have signed up for the academy if I hadn't had that vision."

"How long have you been a cop?" asked Theo.

"Seve n years — the last two as detective."

Theo had no idea if that was rapid advancement or not, but he found himself doing the math related to Drescher's age. He couldn't have a university degree. Theo spent far too much time with academics and scientists; he was always afraid he'd accidentally say something patronizing to those who hadn't gone any further than high school. "That's good," he offered.

Drescher shrugged, but then he frowned and shook his head. "You shouldn't be anywhere near here. You shouldn't be anywhere in Europe, for God's sake. You must have been killed in or near Geneva, or I wouldn't be the cop investigating it. If I'd had a vision that I was going to be killed here on this day, you can bet I'd be in Zhongua or Hawaii instead."

Theo's turn to shrug. "I didn't want to be here, but I have no choice. I told you, I'm with CERN. I was part of the team that led the Large Hadron Collider experiment twenty-one years ago. They need me to duplicate that the day after tomorrow. Believe me, if I had any choice in the matter, I would be somewhere else."

"You haven't taken up boxing, have you?"

"No."

"Because in my vision — "

"I know, I know. You said I was killed at a boxing match."

"My dad, he used to watch boxing all the time on TV," said Helmut. "Funny sport for a shoe salesman, I guess, but he liked it. I used to watch it with him, even when I was a little kid."

"Look," said Theo, "you know in a way that no one else does that I really am at risk. That's why I've come to see you." He swallowed. "I need your help, Helmut. I need police protection. Between now and when the experiment is replicated in — " He glanced at the wall clock, a flatsie held up with tape, fifteen centimeter digits glowing on its surface " — in fifty-nine hours."

Drescher gestured at all the other flatsies strewn across his desk. "I've got a lot of work to do."

"Please. You know what might happen. Most people have this coming Wednesday off work — you know, so they can be safe at home when the time-displacement is replicated. I hate to even ask, but you could use that time to catch up on any work you might miss today and tomorrow."

"I don't have Wednesday off." He gestured at the other people in the squad room. "None of us do — in case something goes wrong." A pause. "You have any idea who might shoot you?"

Theo shook his head, then, glancing at the recording flatsie, said, "No. None. I've wracked my brain for twenty-one years trying to figure it out — trying to determine who I might have pissed off so much that they'd want me dead, or who could profit from having me out of the way. But there's no one."

"No one?"

"Well, you know, you go crazy; you get paranoid. Something like this — it makes you suspect everybody. Sure, for a time, I thought maybe my old partner, Lloyd Simcoe, had done it. But I spoke to Lloyd just yesterday; he's in Vermont, and has no plans to come over to Europe anytime in the near future."

"It's only — what? — a three-hour flight, if he takes a supersonic," said Drescher.

"I know, I know — but, really, I'm sure it's not him. But there is somebody out there, some — what do you guys say? What's the phrase? Some person or persons unknown who may indeed make an attempt on my life today. And I'm asking you — I'm begging you, please — to keep that person or persons from getting at me."

"Where do you have to be today?"

"At CERN. Either in my office, in the LHC control center, or down in the tunnel."

"Tunnel?"

"Yeah. You must have heard of it: there's a tunnel at CERN twenty-seven kilometers in circumference buried a hundred meters down; a giant ring, you know? That's where the LHC is housed."

Drescher chewed on his lower lip for a moment. "Let me talk to my captain," he said. He got up, crossed the room, and rapped his knuckles against a door. The door slid aside, and Theo could see a stern, dark-haired woman within. Drescher entered, and the door closed behind him.

It seemed he was gone for an eternity. Theo looked about nervously. On Drescher's desk was a hologram of a young woman who might be his wife or girlfriend, and an older man and woman. Theo recognized the older woman: Frau Drescher. Assuming it was a recent shot — and, really, it must be; holocameras had been priced out of reach of an honest cop until a couple of years ago — then the decades had been kind to her. She was still a very attractive woman, content to let her hair show its gray.

Finally, the door at the far end of the room opened again, and Detective Drescher emerged. He crossed the busy squad room and returned to his desk. "I'm sorry," he said, as he sat back down. "If someone had made a threat or something… "

"Let me speak to your captain."

Drescher snorted. "She won't see you; half the time she won't even see me." He softened his voice. "I am sorry, Mr. Procopides. Look — just be careful, that's all."

"I thought you — you, of all people — would understand."

"I'm just a cop," said Drescher. "I take orders." He paused, and a sly tone slipped into his voice. "Besides, maybe coming here was a big mistake. I mean, what if I'm the guy who shot you the first time out? Didn't Agatha Christie write a story like that once, in which the detective was the killer? It'd be kind of ironic, then, you coming to see me, no?"

Theo lifted his eyebrows. His heart was pounding, and he didn't know what to say. Jesus Christ, he had been shot with a Glock, a gun favored by police officers all over the world…

"Don't worry," said Drescher, grinning. "I'm just kidding. Figured I deserved to give you a fright after what you did to me all those years ago." But he did reach down and use a couple of swipes of his index finger to erase the last few lines of the transcript from the flatsie.

"Good luck, Mr. Procopides. Like I said, just be careful. For billions of people, the future turned out unlike what their visions portrayed. I shouldn't have to tell you this, you being a scientist and all, but there really is no good reason to think that your vision is going to be the one that actually comes true."

Theo used his cellular phone to call his car, and when it arrived, he got back in.

Drescher was doubtless right. Theo felt embarrassed about his panic attack; probably a bad dream the night before, coupled with anxiety about the upcoming replication, had brought it on. He tried to relax, looking out at the countryside as his car drove him back to the LHC control center. The tour bus was still there. It made him a bit nostalgic. Globus Gateway buses were seen all over Western Europe, of course. He'd never taken one of their tours himself, but as a horny teenager he and a couple of his friends had always watched for them in July and August. North American girls, looking for a summer of excitement, often traveled in such things; Theo had enjoyed more than one romantic evening with an American schoolgirl during his teenage years.

The pleasant memory faded to sadness, though; he was thinking of home, of Athens. He'd only been back twice since Dim's funeral. Why hadn't he made more time for his parents? Theo let his car find a vacant spot. He got out and headed into the LHC control center.

"Oh, Theo," said Jake Horowitz, coming at him from the other end of the mosaic-lined corridor. "I've been trying to get hold of you. I called your car but it said you'd been arrested or something."

"Funny car," said Theo. "Actually, I was just visiting — visiting someone I thought was an old friend."

"There's a problem with the LHC that Jiggs doesn't know how to fix."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, something with one of the cryostat clusters — number four-forty, in octant three."

Theo frowned. It had been years since the LHC had been cranked up to full power. Jiggs, all of thirty-four, was head of the maintenance division; he'd never actually seen the collider used at 14-TeV levels.

Theo nodded; cryostat controls were notoriously finicky. "I'll go have a look." In the old days, when CERN had a staff of three thousand, Theo never would have gone down into the LHC tunnel alone, but with his current skeleton crew, it seemed the best way to apportion his limited manpower, and, well, it was probably the safest place to be: sure, a crazy person might make it onto CERN's campus, looking to shoot Theo, but doubtless such an intruder would be stopped long before he could get down into the tunnel. Besides, no one but Jake and Jiggs — both of whom he trusted completely — would even know that he was down there.

Theo took the elevator to the minus-one-hundred-meter level. The air in the particle-accelerator tunnel was humid and warm, and smelled of machine oil and ozone. The light was dim — a bluish white from overhead fluorescents punctuated at regular intervals by yellow emergency lamps mounted on the walls. The throbbing of equipment, the hum of air pumps, and the clack of Theo's heels against the concrete floor all echoed loudly. In cross-section, the tunnel was circular, except for the flat floor, and its diameter varied between 3.8 and 5.5 meters.

As he'd often done before, Theo Procopides looked down the tunnel in one direction then turned and looked in the opposite direction. It wasn't quite straight. He could see along it for a great distance, but eventually the walls curved away.

Hanging from the tunnel roof was the I-beam track for the monorail, and, hanging from that, the monorail itself; Jiggs had left it parked here. The monorail consisted of a cab big enough to hold a single person, three small cars each designed for cargo rather than passengers, and a second cab, facing the opposite direction, capping the end. The cargo cars weren't much more than hanging baskets made of metal painted peacock-blue. Each cab was an open, orange frame with headlights mounted above its sloping windscreen and a wide rubber bumper mounted below. The windscreens sloped at a sharp angle.

The driver had to sit with his legs out in front of him; the cab wasn't tall enough to accommodate a normally seated person. The name ORNEX — the manufacturer of the monorail — was emblazoned across the cab's front. To either side of the name were small red reflectors, and below it was a wide strip with black-and-yellow safety markings; they wanted to be absolutely sure the cabs would be visible in the dim tunnel. The monorail had been upgraded in 2020; it could manage about sixty kilometers an hour now, meaning it could circumnavigate the tunnel in under thirty minutes.

Theo got a tool box from one of the supply lockers in the staging area, put on his yellow hard hat — even though he rarely went down into the tunnel, he was senior enough that he'd been given his own personal hat. He placed the tool box in one of the cargo cars, clambered into the cab that was facing in the direction he wanted to go — clockwise — and set the train in motion, whirring away into the darkness.

Detective Helmut Drescher tried to get on with his work; he had seven open case files to dig through, and Capitaine Lavoisier had been demanding he make some more progress. But Moot's mind kept turning back to the plight of Theo Procopides. The guy had seemed nice enough; he wished he could have helped him. He'd looked to be in good shape, too, for a man who must have been almost fifty. Moot found the flatsie that had recorded their earlier conversation; the biographical-data box about Theo was still displayed. Born 2 March 1982 — so that would make him forty-eight. Pretty old to be a boxer — besides, he had the wrong build for it. Maybe in whatever alternative reality the visions had shown he'd been a coach or a referee, rather than an actual fighter. But no — that didn't seem right. Moot didn't have the business card with him that Theo had given him two decades ago, although he had saved it through all intervening years, and had looked at it occasionally: it had clearly said CERN on it. So, if he was already a physicist before the visions took place in 2009, it seemed unlikely that he'd switch to a career in sports. But Moot remembered his own vision vividly: the man in the smock — the medical examiner, he knew now — had clearly said that Procopides was killed in the ring, and—

In the ring.

What was it Procopides had said earlier today? You must have heard of it. There's a tunnel at CERN twenty-seven kilometers in circumference buried a hundred meters down; a giant ring, you know?

He'd been a little kid — a little kid who watched boxing with his dad; a little kid who loved the movie Rocky. He'd just assumed back then that "in the ring" meant "in a boxing match," and he'd never given it any more thought since.

A giant ring, you know?

Shit. Maybe Procopides was in real danger. Moot got up from his desk and went back to see Capitaine Lavoisier.

The defective cryostat cluster was ten kilometers away; it would take the monorail about ten minutes to bring Theo there. The cab's headlight beams sliced into the darkness. There were fluorescent lighting fixtures throughout the whole tunnel, but it was pointless to illuminate all twenty-seven kilometers of it.

Finally, the monorail arrived at the location of the wonky cryostat cluster. Theo stopped the train, disembarked, found the panel for controlling the local lighting, and turned it on for fifty meters ahead and behind him. He then retrieved his tool kit and headed over to the defective unit.

This time Capitaine Lavoisier acquiesced, giving Moot permission to act as Theo's bodyguard until the end of the day. Moot took his usual unmarked car and drove to CERN. He suspected CERN was like most places: the transponder signal from a staff member's car would let it pass automatically through the gate, but Moot had to stop and show his badge to the guard computer before the barrier was lifted. He also asked the computer for direction; the CERN campus consisted of dozens of mostly empty buildings. It took him about five minutes to find the LHC control center. He let his car settle to the asphalt and hurried inside.

An attractive middle-aged woman with freckles was coming down a corridor lined with a series of mosaics. Moot showed her his badge. "I'm looking for Theo Procopides," he said.

The woman nodded. "He was here earlier today; let's see if we can find him."

The woman led the way deeper into the building; she tried a couple of rooms, but Theo was in neither of them. "Let's try my husband's office," she said. "He and Theo work together." They went down another corridor, and entered an office. "Jake, this man's a police officer. He's looking for Theo."

"He's down in the tunnel," said Jake. "That damned cryostat cluster in octant three."

"He may be in trouble," said Moot. "Can you take me to him?"

"In trouble?"

"In his vision, he is shot dead today — and I've got reason to believe it was down in the tunnel."

"My God," said Jake. "Um, sure, sure — I can take you to him, and — damn! God damn it, but he must have taken the monorail."

"The monorail?"

"There's a monorail that runs around the ring. But he'll have taken it ten kilometers from here."

"There's only one train?"

"We used to have three more, but we sold them off years ago. We've only got one left."

"You could fly over to the far access station," said the woman. "There's no road, but you could easily fly over the farmers' fields."

"Right — right!" said Jake. He smiled at his wife. "Beautiful and brilliant!" He turned to Moot. "Come on!"

Jake and Moot hurried down the corridors, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot. "We'll take my car," said Moot. They got in, Moot hit the start button, and the car rose off the ground. He followed Jake's instructions for getting out of the campus. Then Jake pointed across an open farmer's field.

The car flew.

Theo looked at the cryostat cluster's housing. No wonder Jiggs had been having trouble fixing it: he'd been going in through the wrong access port. The panel he'd been working behind was still open but the potentiometers Jiggs used to fiddle with were hidden behind another panel.

Theo tried to open the access door that should have let him get at the right controls, but it wouldn't budge. After years of disuse in the dark, damp tunnel, the door had apparently corroded shut. Theo rummaged in his toolkit looking for something he could use to pry it open, but all he had were some screwdrivers that proved inadequate to the task. What he really needed was a crowbar or something similar. He swore in Greek. He could take the monorail back to the campus and get the appropriate tool, but that seemed like such a waste of time. Surely there was something down here in the tunnel that he could use. He looked back the way he'd come; he hadn't noted anything like what he needed during the last few hundred meters of his trip on the monorail but, of course, he wasn't really looking. Still, it seemed to make more sense to continue on clockwise around the tunnel, at least a short distance, and see if he could find something that would do the trick.

The far access station was an old concrete bunker in the middle of a farmer's colza field. Moot's car settled down on the small driveway — there was an access road leading out in the opposite direction — and he shut off its engine. He and Jake got out.

It was noon, and, since this was October, the sun didn't get very high in the sky. But at least the bees, which were a nuisance in summer, were gone. Up the mountainsides there were mostly conifers, of course, but down here there were lots of deciduous trees. The leaves on many of them had already changed color.

"Come on," said Jake.

Moot hesitated. "There's no chance of radiation, is there?"

"Not while the collider is turned off. It's perfectly safe."

As they came toward the blockhouse, a hedgehog scurried by, quickly hiding itself in the ninety-centimeter colza shoots. Jake stopped short at the door. It was an old-fashioned hinged door, with a deadbolt lock. But the door had been pried open; a crowbar lay in the grass next to the blockhouse.

Moot moved to the door. "No corrosion," he said, indicating the metal exposed where the lock had been broken. "This was done recently." He used the toe of his fancy shoes to nudge the crowbar slightly. "The grass underneath is still green; this must have happened today or yesterday." He looked at Jake. "Anything valuable kept down there?"

"Valuable yes," said Jake. "But salable? Not unless you know of a black-market for obsolete high-energy physics equipment."

"You say this collider hasn't been used recently?"

''Not for a few years."

"Might be squatters," said Moot. "Could someone live down there?"

"I — I suppose. It'd be cold and dark, but it is watertight." Moot had a pouch at his hip; he pulled it open and removed a small electronic device, which he waved over the crowbar. "Lots of fingerprints," he said. Jake looked over; he could see the fingerprints fluorescing on the device's display screen. Moot pushed some buttons on his device. After about thirty seconds, some text scrolled across the screen. "No matches on file. Whoever did this has never been arrested anywhere in Switzerland or the E.U." A pause. "How far away is Procopides?"

Jake pointed. "About five kilometers that way. But there should be a couple of hovercarts parked here; we'll take one of those."

"Does he have a cellular? Can we phone him?"

"He's buried beneath a hundred meters of soil," said Jake. "Cell phones don't work."

They hurried into the blockhouse.

Theo had walked a couple of hundred meters down the tunnel without finding anything that would help him pry open the access door on the cryostat cluster. He glanced back; the cluster itself had disappeared around the gentle curve of the ring. He was about to give up in defeat and head back to the monorail when something caught his eye up ahead. It was somebody else, working next to one of the sextupole magnets. The person wasn't wearing a hardhat — a violation of regulations, that. Theo thought about calling out to him, but the acoustics were so bad in the tunnel he'd long ago learned not to bother trying to shout over any distance. Well, it didn't matter who it was, as long as he had a more complete toolkit than the one Theo had brought.

It took Theo another minute to get close to the man. He was working next to one of the air pumps; the racket it made must have masked the sound of Theo approaching. Sitting on the tunnel floor was a hovercart, a disk about a meter and a half in diameter with two single chairs under a canopy. Hovercarts had been developed for use on golf courses; they were much easier on the greens than old-fashioned motorized carts.

Back in the old days, there were thousands of CERN employees whom Theo didn't know on sight, but now, with just a few hundred, he was surprised to see somebody he didn't recognize.

"Hey, there," said Theo.

The man — a thin white fellow in his fifties with white hair and dark gray eyes — swung around, clearly startled. He did have a toolkit with him, but—

He'd opened a large access plate on the side of an air pump and had just finished inserting a device in there—

A device that looked like a small, aluminum suitcase with a string of glowing blue digits on its side.

Glowing digits that were counting down.

30

A series of lockers lined one wall of the blockhouse. Jake helped himself to a yellow hard hat, and indicated that Moot should take one, too. There was an elevator inside, as well as a staircase leading down. Jake pushed the call button for the elevator; they waited an interminable time for the cab to appear.

"Whoever broke in must still be down there," he said. "Otherwise, the elevator would have been waiting at the top."

"Couldn't he have taken the stairs?" asked Moot.

"I suppose, but it's a hundred meters — that's the equivalent of thirty floors in an office building. Even going down, that's exhausting."

The elevator arrived and they got in. Jake pushed the button to activate it. The ride was frustratingly slow; it took a full minute to descend to the tunnel level. Jake and Moot disembarked. There was a hovercart parked here, and Jake started toward it. "Didn't you say there should be two hovercarts here?"

"That's what I'd have expected, yes," said Jake.

Jake got into the hovercart's driver seat, and Moot took the passenger seat. He turned on the cart's headlights and activated its ground-effect fans. The cart floated up, and they headed counterclockwise along the tunnel, going as fast as the little vehicle could manage.

Along the way, the tunnel straightened out for a distance; it did that near all four of the large detectors, to avoid synchrotron radiation. In the middle of the straight section, they saw the giant, twenty-meter-tall empty chamber that used to house the Compact Muon Solenoid detector with its 14,000-ton magnet. At the time it had been built, CMS had cost over a hundred million American dollars. After the development of the Tachyon-Tardyon Collider, CERN had put CMS, as well as ALICE, which used to reside in a similar chamber at another point in the tunnel ring, up for sale. The Nipponese government bought them both for use at their KEK accelerator in Tsukaba. Michiko Komura had supervised the dismantling of the massive machines here and their reassembly in her homeland. The sound of the hovercart's motors echoed in the vast chamber, big enough to house a small apartment building.

"How much longer?" asked Moot.

"Not long," said Jake.

They continued on.

Theo looked at the man, who was still crouching in the tunnel in front of the air pump. "Mein Gott," said the man softly.

"You," said Theo, in French. "Who are you?"

"Hello, Dr. Procopides," said the man.

Theo relaxed. If the guy knew who he was, he couldn't be an intruder. Besides, he looked vaguely familiar.

The man looked back down the tunnel the way he'd come. And then he reached inside the dark leather jacket he was wearing and pulled out a gun.

Theo's heart jumped. Of course, years ago, after young Helmut had mentioned a Glock 9-mm, Theo had looked for a picture of one on the Web. The boxy semiautomatic weapon now facing him was just such a handgun; its clip could hold up to fifteen rounds.

The man looked down at the pistol, as if he himself was surprised to see it in his hand. Then he shrugged slightly. "A little something I picked up in the States — they're so much easier to come by over there." He paused. "And, yes, I know what you're thinking." He gestured at the aluminum suitcase with the blue LED timer. "You're thinking maybe that's a bomb. And that's precisely what it is. I could have planted it anywhere, I imagine, but I came a ways along the tunnel looking for a place to secrete it, lest someone find it. Inside this machine here seemed like a suitable spot."

"What — " Theo was surprised at how his voice sounded. He swallowed, trying to get it back under control. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

The man shrugged again. "It should be obvious. I'm trying to sabotage your particle accelerator."

"But why?"

He gestured at Theo with the gun. "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"You do look familiar, but… "

"You came to visit me in Deutschland. One of my neighbors had contacted you; my vision had shown me watching a newscast on videotape about your death."

"Right," said Theo. "I remember." He couldn't recall the man's name, but he did remember the meeting, twenty years ago.

"And why was I watching that newscast? Why was the story about your death the one story on that newscast that I'd fast-forwarded ahead to see? Because I was checking to see if they had any evidence pointing to me. I'd never meant to kill anyone, but I will kill you if I have to. It's only fair, after all. You killed my wife."

Theo began to protest that he'd done no such thing, but then it came to him. Yes, he recalled his visit with this man. His wife had fallen down the stairs at a subway station during the time-displacement event; she'd broken her neck.

"There was no way we could have known what would happen — no way we could have prevented it."

"Of course you could have prevented it," snapped the man — Rusch, that was his name. It came back to Theo: Wolfgang Rusch. "Of course you could have. You had no business doing what you were doing. Trying to reproduce conditions at the birth of the universe! Trying to force the handiwork of God out into the light of day. Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. But it was your curiosity — and it's my wife who's dead."

Theo didn't know what to say. How do you explain science — the need, the quest — to someone who is obviously a fanatic? "Look," said Theo, "where would the world be if we didn't — "

"You think I'm crazy?" said Rusch. "You think I'm nuts?" He shook his head. "I'm not nuts." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He fumbled with one hand to remove a yellow-and-blue laminated card from it and showed it to Theo.

Theo looked at it. It was a faculty ID card for The Humboldt University. "Tenured professor," said Rusch. "Department of Chemistry. Ph.D. from the Sorbonne." That's right — back in 2009, the man had said he taught chemistry. "If I had known your role in all this back then, I wouldn't have spoken to you. But you came to see me before CERN had gone public with its involvement."

"And now you want to kill me?" said Theo. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it was going to burst, and he could feel sweat breaking out all over his body. "That won't bring your wife back to life."

"Oh, yes it will," said Rusch.

He was mad. Dammit, why had Theo come down into the tunnel alone?

"Not your death, of course," said Rusch. "But what I'm doing. Yes, it will bring Helena back. It's all because of the Pauli exclusion principle."

Theo didn't know what to say; the man was raving. "What?"

"Wolfgang Pauli," said Rusch, nodding. "I like to tell my students I was named for him, but I wasn't — I was named for my father's uncle." A pause. "Pauli's exclusion principle originally just applied to electrons: no two electrons could simultaneously occupy the same energy state. Later, it was expanded to include other subatomic particles."

Theo knew all this. He tried to hide his mounting panic. "So?"

"So I believe that the exclusion principle also applies to the concept of now. All the evidence is there: there can only be one now — throughout all of human history, we have all agreed on what moment is the present. Never has there been a moment that some part of humanity thought was now, while another part thought it was the past, and still another considered it to be in the future."

Theo lifted his shoulders slightly, not following where this was going.

"Don't you get it?" asked Rusch. "Don't you see? When you shifted the consciousness of humanity ahead twenty-one years — when you moved 'now' from 2009 to 2030 — the 'nowness' that should have been experienced by the people in 2030 had to shift somewhere else. The exclusion principle! Every moment exists as 'now' for those frozen in it — you can't superimpose the 'now' of 2009 on top of that of 2030; the two nows cannot exist simultaneously. When you shifted the 2009 now forward, the 2030 now had to vacate that time. When I heard that you were going to be replicating the experiment again at the exact time the original visions had portrayed, it all fell into place." He paused. "The Sanduleak supernova will oscillate for many decades or centuries to come — surely tomorrow's attempt won't be the last. Do you think humanity's taste for seeing the future will be sated with one more peek? Of course not. We are ravenous in our desire. Since ancient times, no dream has been more seductive than that of knowing the future. Every time it is possible to shift the sense of now, we will do it — assuming your experiment succeeds tomorrow."

Theo glanced at the bomb. If he was reading the display properly, it had over fifty-five hours before it would explode. He was trying to think clearly; he'd had no idea just how unnerving it could be to have a gun aimed at your heart. "So — so — what are you saying? That if there's no opening here in 2030 for the consciousness of 2009 to jump into, then that first jump will never happen?"

"Exactly!"

"But that's crazy. The first jump has already happened. We all lived through it twenty-one years ago.

"We didn't all live through it," said Rusch sharply.

"Well, no, but — "

"Yes, it happened. But I'm going to undo that. I'm going to retroactively rewrite the last two decades."

Theo didn't want to argue with the man, but: "That's not possible."

"Yes, it is. I know it is. Don't you see? I've already succeeded."

"What?"

"What did everybody's visions have in common the first time?" asked Rusch.

"I don't — "

"Leisure-time activities! The vast majority of the population seemed to be having a holiday, a day-off. And why? Because they'd all been told to stay home from work that day, to stay safe and secure, because CERN was going to attempt to replicate the time displacement. But something happened — something caused that replication to be called off, too late for people to go back to work. And so humanity got an unexpected holiday."

"It's more likely that what we saw the first time was simply a version of reality in which the precognition event had never occurred."

"Nonsense," said Rusch. "Sure, we saw some people at work — shopkeepers, street vendors, police, and so on. But most businesses were closed, weren't they? You've heard the speculation — that some great holiday would exist on Wednesday, October 23, in 2030, celebrated across the globe. A universal disarmament day, maybe, or a first-contact-with-aliens day. But now it is 2030, and you know as well as I do that no such holiday exists. Everyone was off work, preparing for a time displacement that didn't come. But they'd had some advance warning that it wasn't going to come — meaning the news story that Large Hadron Collider had been damaged must have broken sometime earlier that day. Well, I've got my bomb set to go off two hours before the Sanduleak neutrinos will arrive."

"But if something like that was in the news, surely someone would have seen it in their vision. Someone would have reported it."

"Who would be sitting home watching the news two hours into an unexpected holiday?" asked Rusch. "No, I'm sure the scenario I've described is correct. I will succeed in disabling CERN; the consciousness of 2030 Earth will stay put precisely where it belongs, and the change will propagate backwards from this point, back twenty-one years, rewriting history. My dear Helena, and all the other people who died because of your arrogance, will get to live again."

"You can't kill me," said Theo. "And you can't keep me here for two days. People will notice I'm missing, and they'll come down here to look for me, and they'll find your bomb and disarm it."

"A good point," said Rusch. Carefully keeping the Glock trained on Theo, he backed toward his bomb. He retrieved it from inside the air pump, lifting it up by its suitcase handle. He must have noted Theo's expression. "Don't worry," said Rusch. "It's not delicate." He placed the bomb on the tunnel floor and did something to the counter mechanism. Then he turned the case so that the long side was facing toward Theo. Theo looked down at the timer. It was still counting down, but now said 59 minutes, 56 seconds.

"The bomb will go off in one hour," said Rusch. "It's earlier than I planned, and with this much advanced notice, we're probably cheating people out of their holiday the day after tomorrow, but the gross effect will be the same. As long as the damage to the tunnel will take more than two days to repair, Der Zwischenfall will not be replicated." He paused. "Now, let's you and I start walking. I'm not going to trust myself on a hovercart with you or — I imagine you took the monorail, no? Well, we won't. But in an hour, we can walk sufficiently far along the tunnel that neither of us will be hurt." He gestured with the gun. "So let's get going."

They began to walk counterclockwise — toward the monorail — but before they'd gotten more than a dozen meters, Theo became conscious of a faint whine behind them. He turned around, and so did Rusch. Just rounding the curve of the tunnel off in the distance was another hovercart.

"Damn it," said Rusch. "Who's that?"

Jake Horowitz's red-and-gray hair was easy enough to make out, even at this distance, but the other person—

God! It looked like—

It was. Detective Helmut Drescher of Geneva's finest.

"I don't know," said Theo, pretending to squint.

The hovercart was rapidly approaching. Rusch looked left and right. There was so much equipment mounted on the sides of the tunnel wall that, with some advance warning, one could easily find crannies in which to hide. Rusch left the bomb at the side of the tunnel and started to retreat away from the approaching cart. But it was too late. Jake was clearly pointing at them. Rusch closed the distance between himself and Theo, and jabbed the pistol into Theo's ribs. Theo had never known his heart to beat so fast in his life.

Drescher had his own gun drawn as the hovercart settled to the tunnel floor about five meters away from Rusch and Theo.

"Who are you?" said Jake to Rusch.

"Careful!" blurted Theo. "He's got a gun."

Rusch looked panicked. A little bomb-planting was one thing, but hostage taking and potential murder was another. Still he jerked the Glock into Theo's side again. "That's right," said Rusch. "So back off."

Moot was now standing with legs spread for maximum stability, holding his own gun in both hands aimed directly at Rusch's heart. "I'm a police officer," said Moot. "Drop your weapon."

"Nein."

Moot's tone was absolutely even. "Drop your weapon or I will shoot."

Rusch's eyes darted left and right. "If you shoot, Dr. Procopides dies."

Theo's mind was racing. Had it gone down like this the first time? Rusch would have to shoot him not once, but three times, to match the vision. In a standoff like this, he might get one bullet into Theo's chest — not that it would take more — but surely as soon as he pulled the trigger the first time, Moot would blow Rusch away.

"Back off," said Rusch. "Back off!"

Jake looked as terrified as Theo felt, but Moot stood his ground. "Drop your weapon. You are under arrest."

Rusch's panic seemed to abate for a moment, as if he was simply stunned by the charge. If he really were just a university professor, he'd probably never been in trouble with the law his whole life. But then he brightened somewhat. "You can't arrest me."

"The hell I can't," said Moot.

"What police force are you with?"

"Geneva's."

Rusch actually managed a small, panicked laugh. He jabbed Theo with the gun again. "Tell him where we are."

Theo's insides were churning. He didn't understand the question. "In the Large Hadron — "

Rusch jabbed again. "The country."

Theo felt his heart sinking. "Oh." Damn. God damn it. "We're in France," he said. "The border goes right across the tunnel."

"So," said Rusch, looking at Moot, "you've got no jurisdiction here; Switzerland isn't an E.U. member. If you shoot me outside of your jurisdiction, that's murder."

Moot seemed to hesitate for a moment; the gun in his hand wavered. But then he brought it back to bear directly on Rusch's heart. "I will deal with whatever legalities there are after the fact," said Moot. "Drop your weapon now or I will shoot."

Rusch was standing so close to Theo that Theo could feel his breathing — rapid, shallow. The guy might hyperventilate.

"All right," said Rusch. "All right." He took a step away from Theo and—

Kablam!

The report echoing in the tunnel.

Theo's heart stopping—

— but only for a second.

Rusch's mouth had gone wide in horror, in terror, in fear—

— at the realization of what he'd done—

— as Moot Drescher staggered backward, tumbled and fell, landing on his back, dropping his gun, a growing pool of blood spreading across his shoulder.

"Oh my God!" shouted Jake, "Oh my God!" He surged forward, scrambling for Drescher's weapon.

Rusch looked absolutely dazed. Theo grabbed him from behind, putting his neck in a choke hold, and bringing his knee up into the small of Rusch's back. With his other hand, he tried to wrest the hot, smoking gun from Rusch.

Jake now had Drescher's gun. He tried to aim it at the combined form of Theo and Rusch, but his hands were shaking violently. Theo wrenched Rusch's arm and he dropped his gun. Theo dived out of the way, and Jake squeezed off a shot. But in his inexperienced, trembling hands, the bullet went wild, smashing into a fluorescent lighting tube overhead, which exploded in a shower of sparks and glass. Rusch was scrambling for his dropped gun, too. Neither he nor Theo seemed to be able to get a grip on it, and finally Theo kicked it from Rusch's grabbing hand. It skittered a dozen meters counterclockwise down the tunnel.

Theo had no weapon, and neither now did Rusch. Drescher was surrounded by a lake of blood, but seemed to be still alive; his chest was heaving. Jake tried another shot but it again missed its mark.

Rusch was only halfway to his feet before he started running after the Glock. Theo, realizing he'd never overtake him, decided to go the other way. "He's got a bomb," he shouted as he passed Jake. "Help Moot!"

Jake nodded. Rusch had now recovered his own gun, and had turned around and was running, weapon held in front of him, toward Jake, Moot, and the retreating Theo.

Theo was running for all he was worth, footfalls echoing loudly in the tunnel. Up ahead was the aluminum suitcase containing the bomb. He stole a glance over his shoulder. Jake, still holding Moot's gun, had gone to his knees next to the cop. Rusch passed them, keeping his own gun trained on Jake, preventing him from squeezing off another shot. Rusch turned around, running backward, keeping his weapon on Jake until he was out of Jake's shaky range. He then turned again and continued pursuing Theo.

Theo reached the bomb, scooping it up with one hand, and then—

He got onto Rusch's hovercart, and slammed his foot against the activator pedal. Theo looked back as the cart started to speed away clockwise.

Rusch doubled back. Jake, apparently assuming Rusch had gone, had set down Moot's gun and was pulling his own shirt off over his head, some buttons, still done up — clearly, he wanted to use it as a pressure bandage to stanch the flow of blood out of Moot's body. Rusch had no trouble getting into the hovercart that had brought Jake and Moot to the scene, and he took off after Theo.

Theo had a good lead as he careened along the tunnel. But it was hardly straight-line flying — not only did the curve of the tunnel have to be negotiated, but so did all the giant pieces of equipment that jutted out willy-nilly along its length.

Theo glanced at the bomb's display: 41 minutes, 18 seconds. He hoped Rusch had been telling the truth when he said the explosives weren't fragile. There were a series of unlabeled buttons attached to the display — no way to tell which ones might reset the timer to a higher value, and which ones might cause the bomb to explode immediately. But if he could make it to the access station and get up to the surface, there would be plenty of time to abandon the bomb in the middle of one of the farmers' fields.

Theo's cart had a decided wobble — he was doubtless pushing it faster than its gyros could really deal with. He glanced behind himself again. At first, he began to breathe a sigh of relief — Rusch was nowhere to be seen — but after a second the pursuing cart appeared around the curving wall of the tunnel.

Darkness up ahead; Theo had only activated the roof lighting for a tiny arc of the tunnel's circumference. He hoped Jake had managed to stabilize Moot. Damn — he probably shouldn't have taken the hovercart; surely the need to get Moot to the surface was more important than protecting the equipment in the tunnel. He hoped Jake would realize that the monorail must be nearby.

Shit! Theo's cart touched the outer wall of the tunnel and started spinning around, its headlight beams cutting swaths through the darkness. He fought with the joystick that controlled the cart, trying to get it to keep from crashing into anything else. He got it going back in the right direction, but now Rusch's cart was about halfway down the visible part of the tunnel, instead of at its far end.

The hovercart wasn't going fast enough to make a real breeze, but it nonetheless felt like breakneck speed. Rusch still had the Glock, of course — but a hovercart wasn't like a car; you couldn't shoot out the tires in hopes of bringing it to a halt. The only sure way to stop such a vehicle was to shoot the driver; Theo had to keep pressure on the accelerator pedal for it to continue to move.

Theo kept rocking his cart left and right and raising and lowering it as much as he could in the cramped tunnel; if Rusch was trying to get a bead on him from the rear, he wanted to make himself a difficult target.

He checked the markers on the gently curving wall; the tunnel was divided into eight octants of about three and a half kilometers each, and each octant was subdivided into thirty-odd sections of a hundred meters apiece. According to the signage, he was in octant three, section twenty-two. The access station was at octant four, section thirty-three. He might just make it—

An impact!

A shower of sparks.

The sounds of metal ripping.

Dammit, he wasn't paying enough attention; the hovercart had banged against one of the cryogenics units. It had almost flipped over, which would have dropped Theo and the bomb down onto the floor. Theo fought again with the controls, desperately trying to stabilize the cart. A furtive glance back confirmed his fears: the collision had slowed him down enough that Rusch was now only about fifty meters back. He'd have to be a hell of a good shot to take Theo out at this distance in the dark, but if he got much closer…

The tunnel was constricted up ahead by more equipment; Theo had to drop the cart to only a few centimeters off the floor, but his control of the vehicle at its current speed was poor — the cart skittered across the flooring like a stone being skipped across a lake.

Another glance at the bomb's timing mechanism, the digits glowing bright blue in the dim light. Thirty-seven minutes.

Blam!

The bullet zipped past Theo; he instinctively ducked. It hit some metal fittings up ahead, illuminating the tunnel with sparks.

Theo hoped Jake and Moot had come down the elevator at the access station. If the car was up at the top, there was no way Theo could wait for it, and he'd have to try to make it up the numerous stairs before Rusch could get a bead on him.

Theo swerved again, this time to avoid a bracket supporting the beam pipe. He glanced back. Damn, but Rusch's cart must have had a fuller charge to its batteries; he was now quite close.

The curving tunnel wall continued to pass by, and — yes, by God, there it was! The access station staging area. But—

But Rusch was too close now — much too close. If Theo stopped his cart here, Rusch would blow him away. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Theo felt his heart sink as he passed the access station. He turned around in his chair and watched it receding from view. Rusch, evidently deciding that he didn't want to chase Theo all the way around the tunnel, took another shot. This one did hit the hovercart, its metal body vibrating in response.

Theo urged the cart to go faster. He remembered the old golf carts CERN used to have for traveling short distances in the tunnel. He missed those; at least they weren't constantly in danger of flipping over at high speeds.

They continued on, farther and farther, swinging around the tunnel, and—

A great crashing sound from the rear. Theo looked back. Rusch's cart had smashed into the outside wall. It had come to a dead stop. Theo let out a small cheer.

He figured they'd gone about seventeen kilometers now — soon the staging area for the campus monorail station would be swinging into view. He might be able to get out there and take the elevator straight up into the LHC control center. He hoped he'd see the monorail parked back there, meaning Jake and Moot had made it to safety, and—

God damn it! His hovercart was dying, its battery exhausted. It had probably sounded an alarm earlier, but Theo had been unable to hear it over the noise the overtaxed engines were making. The cart dropped to the tunnel floor, skidding a distance along its concrete surface before coming to a dead halt. Theo grabbed the bomb and began to run. As a teenager, Theo had once participated in a re-creation of the run from Marathon to Athens made in 490 B.C. to announce a Hellenic victory over the Persians — but he'd been thirty years younger then. His heart was pounding now as he tried to go faster.

Kablam!

Another gunshot. Rusch must have gotten his cart going again. Theo kept running, his legs pounding, at least in his mind, like pistons. There, ahead, was the main campus staging area, a half dozen hovercarts parked along its wall. Only another twenty meters—

He glanced back. Rusch was closing rapidly. Christ, he couldn't stop here, either — Rusch would pick him off like a sitting duck.

Theo forced his body to make it the last few meters, and—

The chase continued.

He tumbled into another hovercart and sent himself careening once more down the tunnel, still heading clockwise. He looked back. Rusch dumped his own hovercart, presumably worried about its batteries, and transferred to a fresh one. He headed off in hot pursuit.

Theo glanced at the bomb's timer. Only twenty minutes left, but for once Theo seemed to have a decent lead. And, because of that, he actually stopped to think for a moment. Could Rusch possibly be right? Could there be a chance to undo all the damage, all the death that had occurred twenty-one years ago? If there had never been visions, Rusch's wife might still be alive; Michiko's daughter Tamiko might still be alive; Theo's brother Dimitrios might still be alive.

But, of course, no one conceived after the visions — no one born in the last twenty years — would be the same. Which sperm penetrated an egg was dependent on a thousand details; if the world unfolded differently, if women got pregnant on different days, or even different seconds, their children would be different. There were — what? — something like four billion people who had been born in the last two decades. Even if he could rewrite history, did he have any right to do so? Didn't those billions deserve the rest of their allotted three score and ten, rather than to be simply snuffed out, not even killed but completely expunged from the timeline?

Theo's cart continued its journey around the tunnel. He glanced back; Rusch was emerging in the distance from behind the curve.

No. No, he wouldn't change the past even if he could. And besides, he didn't really believe Rusch. Yes, the future could be changed. But the past? No, that had to be fixed. Upon that much he'd always agreed with Lloyd Simcoe. What this Rusch was saying was crazy.

Another gunshot! The bullet missed him, impacting the tunnel wall up ahead. But there would doubtless be more, if Rusch realized where Theo was headed—

Another kilometer slipped by. The bomb's timer now read just eleven minutes. Theo looked at the wall markings, trying to make them out in the dim light of his headlights. It had to be just ahead, and—

There it was! Just where he'd left it!

The monorail, hanging from the ceiling. If he could make it there—

A new shot rang out. This one did hit the hovercart, and Theo almost lost control of the vehicle again. The monorail was still a hundred meters ahead. Theo fought with the joystick again, swearing at the cart, demanding it go faster, faster—

The monorail had five components — a cab at each end, and three cars in the middle. He had to make it to the far cab; the train would only move in the direction it thought of as forward.

Almost there—

He didn't slow the hovercart gently; instead, he just slammed the brake. The vehicle pitched forward, Theo being tossed with it. It smashed onto the tunnel floor, skidding along, sparks flying. Theo got out, grabbing the bomb, and—

Yet another shot and—

God!

A shower of Theo's own blood splashing against his face—

More pain than he'd ever felt in his life—

A bullet tearing into his right shoulder.

God—

He dropped the bomb, scrambled for it again with his left hand, and staggered into the monorail's cab.

The pain — incredible pain—

He hit the monorail's start button.

Its headlights, mounted above the angled windscreen, snapped on, illuminating the tunnel ahead. After the dimness of the last half hour, the light was painfully bright.

The monorail heaved into motion, whining as it did so. Theo pushed the speed control; the train moved faster and faster still.

Theo thought he was going to black out from the pain. He looked back. Rusch was negotiating his cart past Theo's abandoned one. The monorail used magnetic levitation; it was capable of very high speeds. Of course, no one had ever tested its maximum velocity in the tunnel—

Until now.

The bomb's display said eight minutes.

Another bullet rang out, but it missed its mark. Theo glanced back just in time to see Rusch's cart fall back around the curve of the tunnel.

Theo leaned his head out the side of the cab; there was wind in his face. "Come on," he said. "Come on… "

The tunnel's curving walls flashed by. The mag-lev generators hummed loudly.

There they were: Jake and Moot, the physicist attending to the cop, who was now sitting up, mercifully alive. Theo waved at them as the monorail zoomed past.

Kilometers passed, and then—

Sixty seconds.

He'd never make it to the far access station, never make it to the surface. Maybe he should just drop the bomb; yes, it would disable the LHC no matter where it exploded, but—

No.

No, he had come too far — and he had no fatal flaw; his downfall was not preordained.

If only—

He looked at the timer again, then at the wall markings.

Yes!

Yes! He might just make it!

He urged the train to go even faster.

And then—

The tunnel straightened out.

He hit the emergency brake.

Another shower of sparks.

Metal against metal.

His head whipping forward—

Agony in his shoulder—

He clambered out of the cramped cab and staggered away from the monorail.

Forty-five seconds—

Staggered a few meters farther along the tunnel—

To the entrance to the huge, empty, six-story-tall chamber that had once housed the CMS detector.

He forced himself to go on, into the chamber, placing the bomb in the center of the vast empty space.

Thirty seconds.

He turned around, ran as fast as he could, appalled to see the river of blood he'd left on his way in—

Back out to the monorail—

Fifteen seconds.

Clambering back into the cab, hitting the accelerator—

Ten seconds.

Zipping along the roof-mounted track—

Five seconds.

Around the curve of the tunnel—

Four seconds.

Almost unconscious from the pain—

Three seconds.

Urging the train to go faster.

Two seconds.

Covering his head with his hands, his shoulder protesting violently as he lifted his right arm—

One second.

Wondering briefly what the future held—

Zero!

Ka-boom!

The explosion echoing in the tunnel.

A flash of light from behind sending a huge shadow of the monorail's insectoid form onto the curving tunnel wall—

And then—

Glorious, healing darkness, the train speeding on as Theo collapsed against the tiny dashboard.

Two days later.

Theo was in the LHC control room. It was crowded, but not with scientists or engineers — almost everything was automated. Still, dozens of reporters were present, all of them were lying on the floor. Jake Horowitz was there, of course, as were Theo's own special guests, Detective Helmut Drescher, his shoulder in a sling, and Moot's young wife.

Theo started the countdown, then also lay down on the floor, waiting for it to happen.

31

Lloyd Simcoe often thought of his seven-year-old daughter, Joan, who now lived in Nippon. Of course, they talked every couple of days by video phone, and Lloyd tried to convince himself that seeing and hearing her was as good as hugging her, and bouncing her on his knee, and holding her hand as they walked through parks, and wiping her tears when she fell down and skinned her knee.

He loved her enormously and was proud of her beyond words. True, despite her occidental name, she looked nothing like him; her features were completely Asian. Indeed, more than anything, she looked like poor Tamiko, the half-sister she would never know. But externals didn't matter; half of what Joan was had come from Lloyd. More than his Nobel Prize, more than all the papers he had authored or co-authored, more than anything else, she was his immortality.

And even though she came from a marriage that hadn't lasted, Joan was doing just fine. Oh, Lloyd had no doubt that sometimes she wished her mommy and daddy were still together. Still, Joan had attended Lloyd's wedding to Doreen, capturing everyone's hearts as flower girl for the woman who would soon be her stepmother.

Stepmother. Half-sister. Ex-wife. Ex-husband. New wife. Permutations; the panoply of human interactions, of ways to constitute a family. Hardly anyone got married in a big ceremony anymore, but Lloyd had insisted. The laws in most states and provinces in North America said if two adults lived together for sufficient time, they were married, and if they ceased living together, they ceased to be married. Clean and simple, no muss, no fuss — and none of the pain that Lloyd's parents had gone through, none of the histrionics and suffering that he and Dolly had watched, wide-eyed, stunned by it all, their world crumbling around them.

But Lloyd had wanted the ceremony; he had forgone so much because of his fear of creating another broken home — a term, he'd noted, that his latest Merriam-Webster flagged as "archaic." He was determined never to be daunted by that — by the past — again. And so he and Doreen had tied one on as they tied the knot — a great party, everyone had said, a night to remember, full of dancing and singing and laughter and love.

Doreen had been past menopause by the time she and Lloyd got together. Of course there were procedures now, and techniques, and had she wanted a child she could still have had one. Lloyd was more than willing; he was a father already, but he surely wouldn't deny her the chance to be a mother. But Doreen had declined. She had been content with her life before meeting Lloyd, and enjoyed it even more now that they were together — but she didn't crave children, didn't seek immortality.

Now that Lloyd had retired, they spent a lot of time at the cottage in Vermont. Of course, both of their visions had placed them there on this day. They'd laughed as they furnished the bedroom, making it look exactly as it had when they'd first seen it, precisely positioning the old particle-board night table and knotty-pine wall mirror.

And now Lloyd and Doreen were lying side by side in their bed; she was even wearing a navy-blue Tilley work shirt. Through the window, trees dressed in glorious fall colors were visible. They had their fingers intertwined. The radio was on, counting down to the arrival of the Sanduleak neutrinos.

Lloyd smiled at Doreen. They'd been married now for five years. He supposed, being the child of divorce and now being himself once divorced, that he shouldn't be thinking naive thoughts about being together with Doreen forever, but nonetheless he found himself constantly feeling that way. Lloyd and Michiko had been a good fit, but he and Doreen were a perfect one. Doreen had been married once before, but it had ended more than twenty years ago. She had assumed she'd never marry again, and had been getting on with a single life.

And then she and Lloyd had met, him a Nobel-Prizewinning physicist, and her a painter, two completely different worlds, more different in many ways than Michiko's Nippon was from Lloyd's North America, and yet they had hit it off beautifully, and love had blossomed between them, and now he divided his life into two parts, before Doreen and after.

The voice on the radio was counting down. "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight."

He looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back at him.

"Six. Five. Four."

Lloyd wondered what he would see in the future, but of one thing he had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever.

"Two! One!"

Whatever the future held, Doreen and he would be together, always.

Zero!

Lloyd saw a brief still frame of him and Doreen, much older, older than he would have thought it possible for them to be, and then—

Surely they didn't die. Surely he would be seeing nothing if his consciousness had ceased to be.

His body might have faded away but — a quick glimpse, a flash of an image…

A new body, all silver and gold, smooth and shiny…

An android body? A robot form for his human consciousness?

Or a virtual body, nothing more — or less — than a representation of what he was inside a computer?

Lloyd's perspective shifted.

He was now looking down on Earth, from hundreds of kilometers up. White clouds still swirled over it, and sunlight reflected off the vast oceans…

Except…

Except, in the one brief moment during which he was perceiving this, he thought perhaps that those weren't oceans, but rather the continent of North America, glinting, its surface covered over with a spiderwork of metal and machinery, the whole planet literally having become the World Wide Web.

And then his perspective changed again, but once more he glimpsed Earth, or what he'd thought might have been Earth. Yes, yes, surely it was, for there was the moon, rising over its limb. But the Pacific ocean was smaller, covering only a third of the face he was seeing, and the west coast of North America had changed radically.

Time was whipping by; the continents had had millennia enough to drift to new locations.

And still he skimmed ahead…

He saw the moon spiraling farther and farther away from the Earth, and then—

It seemed instantaneous, but perhaps it had taken thousands of years—

The moon crumbling to nothing.

Another shift…

And the Earth itself reducing, shrinking, being whittled away, growing smaller, a pebble, and then—

The sun again, but—

Incredible…

The sun was now half-encased in a metal sphere, capturing every photon of energy that fell upon it. The Moon and Earth hadn't crumbled — they had been dismantled. Raw materials.

Lloyd continued his journey ahead. He saw—

Yes, it had been inevitable; ye s, he'd read about it countless years ago, but he'd never thought he would live to see it.

The Milky Way galaxy, the pinwheel of stars that humanity called home, colliding with Andromeda, its larger neighbor, the two pinwheels intersecting, interstellar gas aglow.

And still he traveled on, ahead, into the future.

It was nothing like the first time — but then what in life ever is?

The first time the visions had occurred, the switch from the present to the future had seemed instantaneous. But if it took a hundred thousandth of a second, who would have noticed? And if that hundred thousandth of a second had been allotted as 0.00005 seconds per year jumped ahead, again, who would have been aware of that? But 0.00005 seconds times eight billion years added up to something over an hour — an hour spent skimming, gliding over vistas of time, never quite locking in, never quite materializing, never quite displacing the proper consciousness of the moment, and yet sensing, perceiving, seeing it all unfold, watching the universe grow and change, experiencing the evolution of humanity step by step from childhood into…

… into whatever it was destined to become.

Of course Lloyd wasn't really traveling at all. He was still firmly in New England, and he had no more control over what he was seeing or what his replacement body was doing than he'd had during his first vision. The perspective shifts were doubtless due to the repositioning of whatever he'd become as the millennia went by. There must have been some sort of persistence of memory, analogous to the persistence of vision that made watching movies possible. Surely he was touching each of these times for only the most fleeting moment; his consciousness looking to see if that slice through the cube was occupied, and, when it discovered that it was, something like the exclusion principle — Theo had emailed him all about Rusch and his apparent ravings — barring it from taking up residence there, speeding onward, forward, farther and farther into the future.

Lloyd was surprised that he still had individuality; he would have thought that if humanity were to survive at all for millions of years surely it would be as a linked, collective consciousness. But he heard no other voices in his mind; as far as he could tell, he was still a unique separate entity, even if the frail physical body that had once encapsulated him had long since ceased to exist.

He'd seen the Dyson sphere half-encasing the sun, meaning humanity would one day command fantastic technology, but, as yet, he'd seen no evidence of any intelligence beyond that of humans.

And then it hit him: a flash of insight. What was happening meant there was no other intelligent life anywhere — not on any of the planets of the two hundred billion stars that made up the Milky Way, or — he stopped to correct himself — the six hundred billion stars comprising the currently combined supergalaxy formed by the intersection of the smaller Milky Way with larger Andromeda. And not on any of the planets of any of the stars in the countless billion other galaxies that made up the universe.

Surely all consciousness everywhere had to agree on what constituted "now." If human consciousness was bouncing around, shifting, didn't that mean that there must be no other consciousness in existence, no other group vying for the right to assert which particular moment constituted the present?

In which case, humanity was staggeringly, overwhelmingly, unrelentingly alone in all the vast dark cosmos, the sole spark of sentience ever to arise. Life had proceeded on Earth very happily for four billion years before the first stirrings of self-awareness, and still, by 2030, no one had managed to duplicate that sentience in a machine. Being conscious, being aware that that was then and this is now and that tomorrow is another day, was an incredible fluke, a happenstance, a freak occurrence never before or since duplicated in the history of the universe.

And perhaps that explained the incredible failure of nerve that Lloyd had observed time and again. Even by 2030, humanity still hadn't ventured beyond the Moon; no one had gone on to Mars in the sixty-one years since Armstrong's small step, and there didn't seem to be any plans in the works to accomplish that. Mars, of course, could get as far from Earth as 377 million kilometers when the two worlds were on opposite sides of the sun. A human mind on Mars under those circumstances would be twenty-one light-minutes away from the other human minds on Earth. Even people standing right beside each other were separated somewhat in time — seeing each other not as they are but as they were a trillionth of a second earlier. Yes, some degree of desynchronization was clearly tolerable, but it must have an upper limit. Perhaps sixteen light-minutes was still acceptable — the separation between two people on the opposite sides of a Dyson sphere built at the radius of Earth's orbit — but twenty-one light minutes was too much. Or perhaps even sixteen exceeded what was allowable for conscious beings. Humanity had doubtless built the Dyson sphere Lloyd had observed — in so doing walling itself off from the empty, lonely vastness on the outside — but perhaps its entire inner surface was not populated. People might occupy only one portion of its surface. A Dyson sphere, after all, had a surface area millions of times that of planet Earth; even using a tenth of the territory it afforded would still give humanity orders of magnitude more land than it had ever known before. The sphere might harvest every photon put out by the central star, but humanity perhaps did not roam over its entire surface.

Lloyd — or whatever Lloyd had become — found himself pushing farther and farther ahead into the future. The images kept changing.

He thought about what Michiko had said: Frank Tipler and his theory that everyone who ever was, or ever could be, would be resurrected at the Omega Point to live again. The physics of immortality.

But Tipler's theory was based on an assumption that the universe was closed, that it had sufficient mass so that its own gravitational attraction would eventually cause everything to collapse back down into a singularity. As the eons sped by, it became clear that wasn't going to happen. Yes, the Milky Way and its nearest neighbor had collided, but even whole galaxies were minuscule on the scale of an ever-expanding universe. The expansion might slow to almost nothing, asymptotically approaching zero, but it would never stop. There would never be an omega point. And there would never be another universe. This was it, the one and only iteration of space and time.

Of course, by now, even the star enclosed by the Dyson sphere had doubtless given up the ghost; if twenty-first-century astronomers were correct, Earth's sun would have expanded into a red giant, engulfing the shell around it. Humanity had surely had billions of years of warning, though, and had doubtless moved — en masse, if that's what the physics of consciousness required — somewhere else.

At least, thought Lloyd, he hoped they had. He still felt disconnected from all that was playing out in individual illuminated frames. Maybe humanity had been snuffed out when its sun died.

But he — whatever he'd become — was somehow still alive, still thinking, still feeling.

There had to be someone else to share all this with.

Unless—

Unless this was the universe's way of sealing the unexpected rift caused by Sanduleak's neutrinos showering down on a re-creation of the first moments of existence.

Wipe out all extraneous life. Just leave one qualified observer — one omniscient form, looking down, on—

— on everything, deciding reality by its observations, locking in one steady now, moving forward at the inexorable rate of one second per second.

A god…

But of an empty, lifeless, unthinking universe.

Finally, the skimming through time came to an end. He'd arrived at his destination, at the opening up; the consciousness of this far distant year — if the word year had any meaning anymore, the planet whose orbit it measured having long since disappeared — having vacated for even more remote realms, leaving a hole here for him to occupy.

Of course the universe was open. Of course it went on forever. The only way consciousness from the past could keep leapfrogging ahead was if there was always some more-distant point for the present's consciousness to move into; if the universe was closed, the time displacement would never have occurred. It had to be an unending chain.

And before him now—

Before him now was the far, far future.

When he'd been young, Lloyd had read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. And he'd been haunted by it for years. Not by the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks; even as a teenager, he'd recognized that as allegory, a morality play about the class structure of Victorian England. No, that world of A.D. 802,701 had made little impression on him. But Wells's time traveler had made another journey in the book, leaping millions of years ahead to the twilight of the world, when tidal forces had slowed the Earth's spin down so that it always kept the same face toward the sun, bloated and red, a baleful eye upon the horizon, while crab-like things moved slowly along a beach.

But what was before him now seemed even more bleak. The sky was dim — stars having receded so far from each other that only a few were visible. The only bit of loveliness was that these stars, rich in metals forged in the generations of suns that had come and gone before them, glowed with colors never seen in the young universe Lloyd had once known: emerald green stars, and purple stars, and turquoise stars, like gemstones across the velvet firmament.

And now that he was at his destination, Lloyd still had no control over his synthetic body; he was a passenger behind glass eyes.

Yes, he was still solid, still had physical form. He could now and again see what appeared to be his arm, perfect, unblemished, more like liquid metal than anything biological, moving in and out of his field of view. He was on a planetary surface, a vast plain of white powder that might have been snow and might have been pulverized rock and might have been something wholly unknown to the feeble science of billions of years past. There was no sign of buildings; if one had an indestructible body, perhaps one didn't need or desire shelter. The planet couldn't be Earth — it was long since gone — but the gravity felt no different. He wasn't conscious of any smell, but there were sounds — strange, ethereal sounds, something between a sighing zephyr and woodwind music.

He found his field of view shifting as he turned around. No, no, that wasn't it — he wasn't actually turning; rather, he was simply diverting his attention to another set of inputs, eyes in the back of his head. Well, why not? If you were going to manufacture a body, you'd certainly address the shortcomings of the original.

And in his new field of vision, there was another figure, another encapsulation of a human essence. To his surprise, the face was not stylized, not a simple ovoid. Rather it had intricate, delicately carved features, and if Lloyd's body seemed to be made of liquid metal, this other's was flowing green marble, veined and polished and beautiful, a statue incarnate.

There was nothing feminine — or masculine — about the form, but he knew in an instant who it must be. Doreen, of course — his wife, his beloved, the one he wanted to spend eternity with.

But then he studied the face, the carved features, the eyes—

The almond-shaped eyes…

And then—

Lloyd had been lying down in bed when the experiment was replicated, his wife by his side — no way they could hurt themselves or each other when they blacked out.

"That was incredible," said Lloyd, when it was over. "Absolutely incredible."

He turned his head, sought out Doreen's hand, and looked at her.

"What did you see?" he asked.

She used her other hand to shut off the radio. He saw that it was trembling. "Nothing," she said.

His heart sank. "Nothing? No vision at all?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, honey," he said, "I'm so sorry."

"How far ahead was your vision?" she asked. She must have been wondering how long she had left.

Lloyd didn't know how to put it in words. "I'm not sure," he said. It had been an amazing ride — but it was crushing to think that Doreen would not live to see it all, too.

She tried to sound brave. "I'm an old woman," she said. "I thought maybe I'd have another twenty or thirty years, but… " She trailed off.

"I'm sure you will," said Lloyd, trying to sound certain. "I'm sure you will."

"But you had a vision… " she said.

Lloyd nodded. "But it was — it was a long time from now."

"TV on," said Doreen into the air; her voice was anxious. "ABC."

One of the paintings on the wall became a TV screen. Doreen propped her head up to see it better.

" — great disappointment," said the newscaster, a white woman of about forty. "So far, no one has actually reported having a vision this time out. The replication of the experiment at CERN seemed to work, but no one here at ABC News, nor anyone else who has called in to us, has reported having a vision. Everyone seemed to just black out for — early estimates have it that perhaps as much as an hour passed while people were unconscious. As he has been throughout the day, Jacob Horowitz is joining us from CERN; Dr. Horowitz was part of the team that produced the first time-displacement phenomenon twenty years ago. Doctor, what does this mean?"

Jake lifted his shoulders. "Well, assuming a time displacement did occur — and we don't know that for sure yet, of course — it must have been to a time far enough in the future that everyone currently alive is — well, there's no nice way to put it, is there? Everyone currently alive must be dead at that point. If the displacement was, say, a hundred and fifty years, I suppose that's no surprise, but — "

"Mute," said Doreen, from the bed. "But you had a vision," she said to her husband. "Was it as much as a hundred and fifty years ahead?"

Lloyd shook his head. "More," he said softly. "Much more."

"How much?"

"Millions," he said. "Billions."

Doreen made a small laugh. "Oh, come on, dear! It must have been a dream — sure, you'll be alive in the future, but you'll be dreaming then."

Lloyd considered this. Could she be right? Could it have been nothing but a dream? But it had been so vivid — so realistic…

And he was sixty-six years old, for God's sake. No matter how many years they jumped ahead, if he had a vision surely younger people should have, as well. But Jake Horowitz was a quarter-century his junior, and doubtless ABC News had many employees in their twenties and thirties.

And none of them had reported visions.

"I don't know," he said, at last. "It didn't seem like a dream."

32

The future could be changed; they'd discovered that when reality deviated from what had been seen in the first set of visions. Surely, this future could be changed, as well.

Sometime relatively soon a process for immortality — or something damn near to it — would be developed, and Lloyd Simcoe would undergo it. It wouldn't be anything as simple as just capping telomeres, but whatever it was, it would work, at least for hundreds of years. Later, his biological body would be replaced with a more durable robotic one, and he would live long enough to see the Milky Way and Andromeda kiss.

So, all he had to do was find a way to make sure Doreen got the immortality treatment, too — whatever it cost, whatever the selection criteria, he'd make sure his wife was included.

Doubtless there were other people besides himself already alive who would become immortals. He couldn't have been the only one to have a vision; after all, he hadn't been alone at the end.

But, like himself, they were keeping quiet, still trying to sort out what they'd seen. Perhaps someday, all humans would live forever, but of the current generations — of the ones already alive in 2030 — apparently no more than a handful would never know death.

Lloyd would find them. A message on the net, maybe. Nothing so blatant as asking anyone else who had a vision this time out to step forward. No, no — something subtle. Maybe asking all those with an interest in Dyson spheres to get in touch with him. Even those who didn't know what they were seeing at the time they had their visions must have researched the images since their consciousness returned to the present, and the term would have come up in their Web searches.

Yes, he would find them — he would find the other immortals.

Or they would find him.

He'd thought perhaps it had been Michiko that he'd seen on that snow-white plain far in the future.

But then the letter came, inviting him to Toronto. It was a simple email message: "I am the jade man you saw at the end of your vision."

Jade. Of course that's what it was. Not green marble — jade. He'd told no one about that part of his vision. After all, how could he tell Doreen that he'd seen Michiko and not her?

But it wasn't Michiko.

Lloyd flew from Montpelier to Pearson International Airport, and headed down the jetway. It had been an international flight, but Lloyd's Canadian passport got him through customs in short order. A driver was waiting for him just outside the gate, holding a flatsie with the word "SIMCOE" glowing on it. His limousine flew — literally — along the 407 to Yonge Street, and south to the condominium tower atop the bookstore and grocery store and multiplex.

"If you could save only a tiny portion of the human species from death, who would you choose?" said Mr. Cheung to Lloyd, who was now sitting on the orange leather couch in Cheung's living room. "How would you make sure that you'd selected the greatest thinkers, the greatest minds? There are doubtless many ways; for me, I decided to choose Nobel Prize winners. The finest doctors! The preeminent scientists! The best writers! And, yes, the greatest humanitarians — those who had been awarded the peace prize. Of course, anyone could quibble with the Nobel choices in any given year, but by and large the selections are deserving. And so we started approaching Nobel laureates. We did it surreptitiously, of course; can you imagine the public outcry that would ensue if it were known that immortality was possible but it was being withheld from the masses? They would not understand — understand that the process was expensive beyond belief and was likely to remain so for decades to come. Oh, eventually, perhaps, we would find cheaper ways to do it, but at the outset we could afford to treat only a few hundred people."

"Including yourself?"

Cheung shrugged. "I used to live in Hong Kong, Dr. Simcoe, but I left for a reason. I am a capitalist — and capitalists believe that those who do the work should prosper by the sweat of their brows. The immortality process would not exist at all without the billions my companies invested in developing it. Yes, I selected myself for the treatment; that was my right."

"If you're going after Nobel laureates, what about my partner, Theodosios Procopides?"

"Ah, yes. It seemed prudent to administer the process in descending order of age. But, yes, we'll do him next, despite his youth; for joint winners of the Nobel, we're processing all members of the team at the same time." A pause. "I met Theo once before, you know — twenty-one years ago. My original vision had dealt with him, and when he was searching for information about his killer, he came to visit me here."

"I remember; we were in New York together, and he flew up here. He told me about his meeting with you."

"Did he tell you what I said to him? I told him that souls are about life immortal, and that religion is about just rewards. I told him I suspected great things awaited him, and that he would one day receive a great reward. Even then, I suspected the truth; after all, by rights, I should have had no vision — I should have been dead by now, or, at least, not walking unaided at a sprightly pace. Of course, I couldn't be sure that my staff would one day develop an immortality technique, but it was a long-standing interest of mine, and the existence of such a thing would explain the good health I experienced in my vision, despite my advanced age. I wanted to let your friend know, without giving away all my secrets, that if he could survive long enough, the greatest reward of all — unlimited life — would be offered to him." A pause. "Do you see him much?"

"Not anymore."

"Still, I'm glad — more glad than you can know — that his death was prevented."

"If you were worried about that, and you had immortality available, why didn't you give him your treatment prior to the day on which the first visions showed he might die?"

"Our process arrests biological senescence, but it certainly doesn't make you invincible — although, as you doubtless saw in your vision, substitute bodies will eventually address that concern. If we were to invest millions in Theo, and he ended up being shot dead, well, that would be a waste of a very limited resource."

Lloyd considered this. "You mentioned that Theo is younger than me; that's true. I'm an old man."

Cheung laughed. "You're a child! I've got more than thirty years on you."

"I mean," said Lloyd, "if I'd been offered this when I was younger, healthier — "

"Dr. Simcoe, granted you are sixty-six — but you have spent that entire span under the care of increasingly sophisticated modern medicine. I've seen your health records — "

"You've what?"

"Please — I'm dispensing eternal life here; do you seriously think that a few privacy safeguards are a barrier to a person in my position? As I was saying, I have seen your health records: your heart is in excellent shape, your blood pressure is fine, your cholesterol levels are under control. Seriously, Dr. Simcoe, you are in better health now than any twenty-five-year-old born more than a hundred years ago would have been."

"I'm a married man. What about my wife?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Simcoe. My offer is to you alone."

"But Doreen — "

"Doreen will live out the remainder of a natural life — another twenty-odd years, I imagine. She is being denied nothing; you will be able to spend every year of that with her. At some point, she will pass on. I'm a Christian, Dr. Simcoe — I believe better things await us… well, most of us. I have been ruthless in life and I expect to be judged harshly… which is why I am in no hurry to receive my reward. But your wife — I know much about her, and I suspect her place in heaven is secure."

"I'm not sure I'd want to go on without her."

"She, doubtless, would wish that you would go on, even if she herself could not. And, forgive my bluntness, but she is not your first wife, nor you her first husband. I do not denigrate the love you feel, but you are, quite literally, simply phases in each other's lives."

"And if I choose not to participate?"

"My expertise is in pharmaceuticals, Dr. Simcoe. If you choose not to participate, or if you feign acceptance, but give us reason to doubt your sincerity, you will be injected with mnemonase; it will break down all of your short-term memory. You will forget this entire encounter. If you really do not desire immortality, please take that option — it is painless and has no lasting side effects. And now, Dr. Simcoe, I really must have your answer. What do you choose?"

Doreen picked Lloyd up at the airport in Montpelier. "Thank God you're home!" she said, as soon as Lloyd got out of baggage claim. "What happened? Why did you miss the earlier flight?"

Lloyd hugged his wife; God, how he loved her — and how he hated being away from her. But then he shook his head. "It was the damnedest thing. I completely forgot that the return flight was at four o'clock." He shrugged a bit, and managed a small smile. "I guess I'm getting old."

33

Theo sat in his office. It had once, of course, been Gaston Beranger's office, but his five-year term had long ago ended, and these days CERN wasn't big enough to require a Director-General. So Theo, as director of the TTC, had made it his own. Old Gaston was still around; he was professor emeritus in physics at the University of Paris at Orsay. He and Marie-Claire were still happily married, and they had a terrific, honor-student son, and a daughter, as well.

Theo found himself staring out the window. It had been a month since the great blackout — the Flashforward in which everyone lost consciousness for an hour. But they'd done Klaatu proud: not a single fatality had been reported worldwide.

Theo was still alive; he'd avoided his own murder. He was going to live — well, who knew how long? Decades more, certainly. A new lease on life.

And, he realized with a start, he didn't know what he was going to do with all that time.

It was autumn; too late to literally smell the roses. But figuratively?

He got up, let the inner office door slide aside, let the outer office door do the same, made his way to the elevator, rode down to the ground floor, walked along a corridor, passed through the lobby, and exited the building.

The sky was cloudy; still, he put on his sunglasses.

When he'd been a teenager, he'd run from Marathon to Athens. When he was done, he'd thought his heart would never stop pounding, thought he'd never stop gasping for breath. He remembered that moment vividly — crossing the finish line, completing the historic run.

There were other moments he remembered vividly, of course. His first kiss; his first sexual encounter; specific images — postcards in his mind — from that trip to Hong Kong; graduating from university; the day he met Lloyd; breaking his arm once playing lacrosse. And, of running their first LHC experiment, the jump cut—

But—

But those sharp moments, those crisp memories, why, they were all from two decades or more in the past.

What had happened lately? What peak experiences, what exquisite sorrows, what giddy heights?

Theo walked along; the air was cool, bracing. It gave everything an edge, definition, form, a clarity that had been missing ever since—

Ever since he'd started investigating his own death.

Twenty-one years, obsessed by one thing.

Did Ahab have sharp memories? Oh, yes — losing his leg, no doubt. But after that — after he'd begun his quest? Or was it all a blur, month after month, year after year, everything and everyone subsumed?

But no — no. Theo was no Ahab; he wasn't hell-bent. He had found time for many things between 2009 and today, here, in 2030.

And yet—

And yet he'd never allowed himself to make plans for the future. Oh, he'd continued to work at his job, and had been promoted several times, but…

He'd once read a book about a man who learned at age nineteen that he was at risk for Huntington's disease, a hereditary disorder that would rob him of his faculties by the time he reached middle age. That man had bent himself to the task of making a mark before his allotted span was up. But Theo hadn't done that. Oh, he'd made some good progress in his physics work, and, of course, he did have his Nobel. But even that moment — receiving the medallion — was out of focus.

Twenty-one years, overshadowed. Even knowing that the future was mutable, even promising himself he wouldn't let his search for his potential killer take over his life, two decades had slipped by, mostly lost — if not actually skipped over, certainly dulled, reduced, lessened.

No fatal flaw? It is to laugh.

Theo continued walking. A chorus of birds chirped in the background.

No fatal flaw? That had been the most arrogant thought of all. Of course he had a fatal flaw; of course he had a hamartia. But it was the mirror image of Oedipus's; Oedipus had thought he could escape his fate. Theo, knowing the future was changeable, had still been dogged by the fear that he couldn't outwit destiny.

And so—

And so he hadn't married, hadn't had children; in that, he was even less than Ahab.

Nor had he read War and Peace. Or the Bible. Indeed, Theo hadn't read a novel for — what? — maybe ten years.

He hadn't traveled the world, except for where his old quest for clues had taken him.

He hadn't learned gourmet cooking.

Hadn't taken bridge lessons.

Hadn't climbed Mont Blanc, even part way.

And now, incredibly, he suddenly had — well, if not all the time in the world, at least a lot more time.

He had free will; he had a future to make.

It was a heady thought. What do you want to be when you grow up? The cartoon-character clothing was indeed gone. As was his youth; he was forty-eight. For a physicist, that was ancient. He was too old, in all likelihood, to make another major breakthrough.

A future to make. But how would he define it?

As laser-bright moments; diamond-hard memories; crisp and clear. A future lived, a future savored, a future of moments so sharp and pointed that they would sometimes cut and sometimes glint so brightly it would hurt to contemplate them, but sometimes, too, would be joyous, an absolute, pure, unalloyed joy, the kind of joy he hadn't felt much if at all lo these twenty-one years.

But from now on—

From now on, he would live.

But what to do first?

The name rose again, from his past, from his subconscious.

Michiko.

She was in Tokyo, of course. He'd gotten an E-card from her at Christmas, and another on his birthday.

She'd divorced Lloyd — her second husband. But she'd never married again after that.

You know, he could go to Tokyo, look her up. That would be a wonderful moment.

But, God, it had been so many years. So much water under the bridge.

Still…

Still, he had always been very fond of her. So intelligent — yes, that's what he thought of first; that wonderful mind, that sharp wit. But he couldn't deny that she was pretty, too. Maybe even more than pretty; certainly graceful and poised, and always immaculately dressed in the currently fashionable style.

But…

But twenty-one years had passed. There had to be someone new after all that time, no?

No. There wasn't; he'd have heard gossip. Of course, he was younger than her, but that didn't really matter, did it? She would be — what? — fifty-six now.

He couldn't just pick himself up and go to Tokyo.

Or could he?

A life to be lived…

What did he have to lose?

Not a blessed thing, he decided. Not a blessed thing.

He headed back into the building, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, two steps at a time disappearing beneath his long strides, shoes slapping loudly and crisply.

Of course he'd call her first. What time was it in Tokyo? He spoke the question into the air. "What time is it in Tokyo?"

"Twenty hours, eighteen minutes," replied one of the countless computerized devices scattered around his office.

"Dial Michiko Komura in Tokyo," he said.

Electronic rings emanated from the speaker. His heart began to pound. A monitor plate popped up from his desktop, showing the Nippon Telecom logo.

And then—

There she was. Michiko.

She was still lovely, and she had aged gracefully; she could have passed for a dozen years younger than her real age. And, of course, she was stylishly attired — Theo hadn't seen this particular look yet in Europe, but he was sure it must be cutting-edge in Nippon. Michiko was wearing a short blazer that had rainbow patterns of color rippling across it.

"Why, Theo, is that you?" she said, in English.

The E-cards had been text-and-graphics only; it had been years since Theo had heard that beautiful, high voice, like water splashing. He felt his features stretching into a grin. "Hello, Michiko."

"I'd been thinking about you," she said, "as the date the visions showed got closer. But I was afraid to call. Afraid you might think I was calling to say goodbye."

He would have loved to have heard her voice earlier. He smiled. "Actually, the man who killed me in the visions is in custody now. He tried to blow up the LHC."

Michiko nodded. "I read that on the Web."

"I guess no one's vision came true."

Michiko lifted her shoulders. "Well, maybe not precisely. But my beautiful little daughter is just as I saw her. And, you know, I've met Lloyd's new wife, and he says she's just as he'd envisioned her. And the world today is a lot like what the Mosaic Project said it was going to be."

"I guess. I'm just glad that the part involving me didn't come true."

Michiko smiled. "Me, too."

There was silence between them; one of the joys of video phones was that silence was okay. You could just look at each other, bask in each other, without words.

She was beautiful…

"Michiko," he said softly.

"Hmm?"

"I, ah, I've been thinking a lot about you."

She smiled.

He swallowed, trying to work up the courage. "And I was wondering, well, what you'd think if I came out to Nippon for a bit." He raised his hand, as if feeling a need to provide them both with an out if she wanted to deliberately misread him, letting him down gently. "There's a TTC at the University of Tokyo; they've been asking me to come and give a talk about the development of the technology."

But she wasn't looking for an out. "I'd love to see you again, Theo."

Of course, there was no way to tell whether anything would happen between them. She might just be looking for a bit of nostalgia, remembering things past, the times they'd had at CERN all those years ago.

But maybe, just maybe, they were on the same wavelength. Maybe things would work out between them. Maybe, after all these years, it was going to happen.

He certainly hoped so.

But only time would tell.