Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm (29 page)

Adam checked the exterior surfaces and frowned. “There’s actually a lot of damage. The warping looks to have cracked the exterior, though the cracks didn’t occur until the journey finished.” He glanced at Angel. “When the time machine appeared, we all heard loud cracking noises.” He steepled his fingers together. “We’ll need to reconsider the exterior material, or add some type of reinforced shielding.”

Angel inspected the interior. “I don’t detect much damage in here, although…” She frowned as she checked the dashboard. “Yeah, it looks like the crack let in enough of the warp energy to hit everything. The dashboard is fried.” The stench of burning plastic hit her sensitive olfactory nerves as she spoke. “Whew.”

Fil had carefully opened the “hood” of the time travel car, but jumped back as the lid opened. “Oh, this is
not
good.” He scowled, concern etched into his brow.

Angel hopped out of the cabin and walked around, aware of a new smell. The source became evident. The “brains” of time travel, the computer that calculated the jump, pulled in the necessary energy, put the time warp field around the vehicle and activated the actual travel sequence, was…

“Destroyed.” She spoke in a whisper, trying to avoid the tone of despair.

Adam came and joined them, nodding. He placed a comforting hand on each shoulder. “This is not a catastrophe by any means.”

Fil stared at Adam, incredulous. Angel could sense what he felt: he thought this failure was entirely his fault. “How do you figure that, Adam? The control panel is destroyed. The time circuits are melted. We’ve lost everything we’ve built.”

“We’ve not lost everything,” Adam said. “On the contrary, this is a
phenomenally successful
first attempt.” He looked at them. “Look at the clock.”

They both looked at the clock on the wall, which by now read 4:40. “What of it?” Angel asked.

“Look at the clock that was inside the craft.”

They looked. “It says 4:32,” she said, shrugging. “So?”

“So? The machine didn’t disappear and reappear. It did exactly what it was designed to do. It
moved forward in time.
” He looked at Fil. “I fully expected the first test to result in the machine wobbling around, or exploding, or any of a number of undesirable things. Instead, the craft actually moved through time. On our
first attempt
. This isn’t good; this is
phenomenal.
” He waved his hand at the time machine and the various aromas emanating forth. “The other stuff? We can deal with that.”

“Adam, don’t you understand?” Fil’s eyes were flashing again. “We have to make a
round trip
in this machine. We’ll use far more energy than we’ll use for a mere eight-minute jump. If a short trip like this destroyed all of the parts, we can’t call it successful because we made it there. No, it will be an abject failure.” He paused. “Because we won’t make it back.”

“All fair points, Fil,” Adam replied. “And we have forty years to fix those problems.”

“More, actually,” Angel said.

“Okay, we have forty-four years,” Fil muttered. “That’s not a lot of time for a scientific breakthrough like this.”

Angel shook her head. “Guys, we have a
time machine
. If we don’t get it to work until 2230, we can
still
go back to 2030, get Dad, and return to 2219.”

“That’s true, but how do we live through the events of 2219 when we’re also trying to fix the time machine? And what happens if, after we send Will back in time… what if something happens to one of us?” Adam shook his head. “I understand your point, Angel, and you’re absolutely correct in theory. But there are significant complications if we don’t have the machine built
before
Will arrives in the future from the past.”

Angel frowned, but did her best to remain positive. “Those are worst case scenarios. For now, I prefer to focus on our opportunity to finish this process far in advance of the time we’ll need it. We have forty-four years? I think we’re ready in twenty.” She folded her arms, smiled, and nodded emphatically.

The Mechanic cleared his throat. “I think we’re far closer than that.”

They turned back to him. The Mechanic held the battery he’d removed from the time machine. He set the battery down and motioned them around to the front of the vehicle.

He pointed at parts of the machines as he explained his statement. “There are two critical items to notice here. We built the craft with a metal exterior due to the expected pressures of the time field. Metal is an excellent conductor of electricity. That means you need to make certain that you don’t have metal contacting metal.” He pointed, and each of them saw it. A wire sprouted from the battery compartment and led… nowhere. The loose wire wasn’t in contact with metal at this point. Given that the end was charred, however, Angel suspected that hadn’t been the case throughout the trip. “It looks like that wire was jarred free during the jump, and at some point touched the metal side of the craft. That energy surge may explain the damage to the exterior of the craft.”

“It might be the cause of the damage to the console as well,” Fil said, glancing at the interior compartment. “If that wire touched the metal and the metal conducted that electricity through the body of the craft, then…”

The Mechanic shook his head. “I think we’re looking at an insufficient amount of insulation for the wires. We’ll also need shielding to prevent electrical surges to the computer systems and dashboard. I suspect that the surge of electricity into the time travel circuits was matched by a surge to the computing systems and cabin dashboard. Those are simple fixes. We just need to rebuild the console and fix the wires.”

“I can do that,” Angel said. “We should have wire insulators back at the port. I’m worried about the amount we’ll need, especially around the battery itself.”

“Ah, and that brings me to the other happy event we’ve seen today,” the Mechanic said. “Adam is correct in his assessment of this test as a success, and that was before he realized that the mistakes made leading to the outcomes we saw are easily correctible. And it was before he saw this.” He picked the keg-like battery from the ground and rolled it around.

They looked at the digital display readouts on the side. Fil saw it first. Then Adam. And as they began to laugh, Angel saw it as well. “This is too good to be true, isn’t it? Can that be right?”

The Mechanic grinned. “The display doesn’t lie. We used only twenty percent of the energy in that battery when our calculations said we’d need every bit of it to move that craft forward eight minutes in time. We’ll need to revise our formulas and calculations as a result of this and future tests. We know how much energy we’ll need to transport the craft to England due to our work with the transporters. But it looks like we’ll need
far
less electrical energy than previously suspected to get him to the correct
year
.”

They looked at each other for a moment. The smiles began forming on each face. Angel felt the happiness and sense of accomplishment. “Can that be right? Have we already identified all of the issues with just the one test? Are we… done?”

Adam shook his head. “If I’ve learned one thing in my time it’s this: surprises will always happen. Even when we think we have perfect information about the future or the past, the details we
don’t
have will have a major impact on plans.”

“What surprised you about the fire?” Fil asked.

Adam looked uncomfortable. “We didn’t realize how many people the Assassin and Hunters would actually reach because… well, Will’s memories only covered what he was able to see. We knew about the guards because Will saw the police officer’s reaction after seeing their bodies.” He sighed. “That was the tragedy we wanted to prevent with our future hindsight. We wanted to give those human guards a chance to live. And we gave both of them that option.” He paused. “What didn’t we know? We didn’t know that they learned of Will and Hope’s marriage through a conversation Porthos had with Gena.”

Angel blinked. “Gena?
Our
Gena?”

Adam nodded. “The same. We found that out two days before everything happened, and realized that she’d be able to identify Porthos. The police would bring her in to provide testimony. The Hunters would figure that out. So… we made a clone of her. Did the same for the MacLeans. All of the clones died, Gena’s at Porthos’ hands, and the MacLeans from, ah, natural causes.”

Angel stared at him. “I never knew that before now.”

Adam nodded. “Even now, we’re cautious about revealing Will’s origins. Many people know, of course; there’s nothing we can do about that. Noting that Gena was nearly killed because she’d inadvertently enabled the attack on Hope and Fil would raise awkward questions.” He shrugged. “We… choose not to mention it.”

Angel considered that. The news of Will Stark’s death and the tremendous fire at his home were easily explained in conversations the members of the Alliance had amongst themselves. Will clearly survived the attack in 1995 as most suspected. He’d moved into a public human role to help end the global economic depression, naturally marrying Hope. They’d figured out the cure to ambrosia by then, and the fact that the couple had conceived a son wasn’t a shock. The surprise attack by the Hunters and Assassin had been repelled enough to allow all parties to survive.

If word leaked out that Gena had been cloned because they’d known she’d be killed after the attack, questions would follow. How had they known about the attack ahead of time? And how did they know that Gena, not yet even an Alliance recruiting target, would perish at the hands of the Tracker? Why did they feel the need to make a clone of her?

Fil frowned. “I remember now how all of you were thinking about the fact that Gena wasn’t there the night Mom and I left the bunker. I was six, so it didn’t mean anything to me. Lots of people weren’t there, right? Now, though… yeah, it would have seemed strange if I’d thought about it.” He nodded. “Point taken, though. I see what you mean about being prepared, because anything can still happen. We should test the time machine as often as possible.”

“I agree, and I think we should do more than test often,” the Mechanic said. “I think we need to build redundancy into the process.”

“How so?” Adam asked. “Pack spare batteries?”

The Mechanic nodded. “At a minimum. I think we need to build a spare time machine. That machine will be there in the event the original time machine suffers a severe malfunction. I’ll remain in 2219, and if the time machine fails to arrive at the appointed time, I’ll send the spare back to a defined location that you can reach.”

Angel felt a chill. “What if the second craft didn’t make it either?”

The Mechanic set his jaw. “I’ll keep making them until I send one back that gets you home safely. We aren’t stranding any of you in the past with no way to get back here.”

Adam nodded. “As unlikely as these scenarios might seem, we need to think about this and make plans to deal with these possible outcomes. What if we need to take Will into hiding? What if the Hunters find us during that time?” He shrugged.

“From your perspective, it won’t look like that,” the Mechanic said. “If the first craft fails to work, you go to the designated location and the new machine will be there. I’ll build and send back time machines until one returns with all of you.”

“It will work the first time,” Angel said. “We’re going to do a test across a long period of time and know the machine that we’ve built works.”

“How will we do that?” Eva asked.

Angel looked at her watch. “I have 5:00 exactly. We need to remember this time and this spot.”

“Why?” Fil asked.

Angel pointed to an empty corner of the room. “Look there.”

They turned and watched as a second time machine materialized before their eyes.

“We now know it worked in the future.” Angel said. “That machine was sent back to this time from the future, a test to tell us that we made it. We just need to document the exact coordinates and time and send a test machine back when we’re ready. And we can learn from the design of that machine, use it to verify that—”

The new time machine disintegrated. Angel felt the shock ripple through her.

Eva stared at the empty space. “What happened?”

Adam shook his head. “Another example of the unexpected. Why would we send a machine back in time that dissolved into nothing?”

Angel sucked in her breath. “It’s a reminder. Dad’s time machine disappeared when he got to England.” She looked at each of them. “We don’t just have to build a time machine. We have to build one that can dissolve.”

The Mechanic shook his head. “I don’t know how to do that.”

Angel smiled. “I don’t either. But I know now that we’ll figure it out.”

Fil set his jaw. “Then let’s get busy doing just that. We have lives to save.”

XVII

Walkthrough

2218 A.D.

Charlie watched the Mechanic checking each connection and component a third time. “Is that the last thing we have to do?”