Project J (2 page)

Introductions were made, with this man being Dr. Marshal Crane, the Chief Scientist and Assistant Director for the project.

“Miss Graves needs to have a briefing on our project,” Dr. Stryker told him.
 
“She’s an auditor from DOD.”

Tamara did not like the look she got from Dr. Crane, but that was not unusual.
 
No one likes auditors.

“How much science have you had, Miss Graves?” Crane asked.

“A few science classes in college,” she told him.
 
Actually, she had had more than a few, but she liked to not let people know just how much she knew.
 
They tend to make mistakes that way.

“Well...
 
I’ll keep it basic.”
 
Turning to Dr. Stryker, he received a nod and began his lecture.

“Quite simply put, what we have developed is a time machine.”
 
He paused to see her reaction.

“I’ve heard that time travel is impossible,” she said, not showing any surprise.
 
“Unless by time machine, you mean a better clock.”

“Time travel
is
impossible,” he agreed.
 
“For a number of reasons.
 
There are the classic paradoxes that time travel could create – like someone going back in time and killing his own father so that he would never be born.
 
But then how could he go back in time in the first place?”

He paused again, but continued when Tamara only nodded.

“Another reason is conversion of matter/energy.
 
If I were to travel back in time and my body appear in, say, 1880, that would mean that this time would be short the mass of my body.
 
And that can’t happen because you cannot create or destroy matter and energy.
 
You can convert them from one form to another, but not create them from nothing nor make them disappear into nothing.
 
E equals M C squared and all that.

“Time travel, as most people know it, is therefore impossible.
 
But...”
 
He smiled.
 
“But we found a way to create something from the past in the present.
 
It does not break the conservation of matter/energy because no matter or energy is exchanged between the point in the past and the present.

“Are you familiar with entanglement, Miss Graves?
 
Quantum entanglement?”

“Explain it to me.”

“Under certain conditions, two particles of matter can become connected in a way that is buried deep within quantum theory.
 
When the state of one particle, such as the position,
momentum
,
spin
,
or
polarization
, changes, the same measurement of that state of the other particle will also change.
 
It will be the opposite, actually.
 
And this happens no matter how far apart the particles are.
 
And it happens instantaneously.
 
No time lag at all.
 
It is the only phenomenon we know that can apparently exceed the speed of light.
 
Two entangled particles can be light years apart and still change simultaneously.”

“But Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,” she protested.
 
“How does the second particle know...?”

“Correct.
 
But entanglement does not involve anything traveling.
 
In fact, entanglement was first suggested by Einstein himself, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen in a 1935 paper.
 
Erwin Schrodinger, of the live/dead cat fame, did several papers on it shortly thereafter.

“When you make an experiment that causes one member of an entangled pair to take on a definite value, the other member will be found to have the opposite value from that point in time on.
 
This can happen with any particle: photons, electrons, even molecules.
 
In quantum entanglement, the transfer of state happens instantaneously, no matter the distance between the objects.
 
Well, maybe not instantaneously, but recent experiments have shown that this transfer occurs at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light.
 
Those experiments only give a lower limit to the speed.
 
There probably isn’t any upper limit, since it may well be truly instantaneous.

“In our original research, we found that it was possible to entangle two particles even when they were separated by both distance
and
time.
 
We found a way to make particles today assume the state of particles days ago.
 
Well, after allowing for reversing the measured property of the particle.
 
Do this for all the particles in an object and you’ve created an exact copy.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Tamara said.
 
“You can entangle two particles across a period of time?”

“That’s right.
 
We can entangle a particle here and now with any particle from anywhere and from any time.
 
The original experiments were carried out ten years ago.
 
We’ve come a long ways since them.
 
This is mostly because larger, faster computers are available now.
 
You know what a FLOP is?”

“Floating Point Instruction.
 
A measure of computer speed,” she said.

Giving her a weary glance, he continued, “Right, a FLOP is a floating point operation per second.
 
Right now the officially fastest computer in the world is in China.
 
It’s called the
Tianhe-2
and runs at 33.86 petaFLOPS.
 
That’s thirty-three quadrillion instructions per second.
 
Ten to the fifteenth power.

He smiled.
 
“But Lightning, that’s the name for our main computer, runs at one hundred petaFLOPS!”
 
Turning to Dr. Stryker, he added, “It’s too bad we can’t tell the world about Lightning.”

“You know it’s classified,” Stryker responded.

“Yes.
 
Well, as I said, we have been developing this entanglement of particles between the past and present until now we can actually reproduce an object from the past in the here and now.
 
Since each particle of the object will be identical to the original, it
will
be the same object.
 
There is absolutely no way you could tell the two apart.
 
Assuming, that is, you had some way of bringing them together. Which would normally be impossible.

“We’ve run a number of tests of this principle and believe me, it works!
 
Gobbles up computer power like you wouldn’t believe!
 
But then you have to understand that we have to be able to entangle each and every particle in the object, reproducing it here and now precisely as it was at an instant in prior time.

He paused, and looked at Tamara for reaction.
 
But all he got was a frown.
 
She had seen plenty of top secret projects in her work, but never anything as weird sounding as this.

“And what is the good of this?” she finally asked.
 
“Besides an interesting and expensive science experiment.”

“Don’t you see?
 
The military potential alone is tremendous!
 
Let’s say you want to know some technical secret hidden deep within a foreign country.
 
You just scan back in time to when that secret was written down, locate it – which is another development we discovered almost by accident – and you copy that piece of paper right here into the lab.
 
Would work well for industrial secrets.
 
Of course,” he admitted almost shyly, “a hell of a lot of historians, anthropologists, paleontologists and such would beg to get their hands on this if they knew about it.”

“Which explains why this project is classified at the highest level,” interjected Dr. Stryker.

“Yes, well, someday...” Crane muttered.

“Just how far along are you?” she asked.

The two men glanced at each other.

“Pretty far.
 
Marshal, why don’t you show her the museum?”

“Yes.
 
Good.
 
Come along, Miss Graves, I’ve got some interesting things to show you.”

Chapter 2:
 
Trinkets

The “museum” was just an office on the main floor, not far from the conference room.
 
But, unlike most offices, it lacked a desk or even chairs.
 
In fact, the only furniture was two tables and a couple filing cabinets.
 
The only adornment was a single framed picture on one wall.
 
Tamara walked over to it.
 
On a plain white background was a single piece of paper, only a few square inches, brown with some black markings on it.

“That was our first object retrieved from the past,” Dr. Stryker told her.
 
“Well, except for test items from the near past.
 
This was the first real piece of history we retrieved.
 
It is a piece of papyrus dating from one thousand BC.
 
Not much to look at, but it was a scientific breakthrough standing right up there with the printing press and the splitting of the atom.”

She looked a little closer.
 
Yes, those could be hieroglyphics. But they lacked the faded look she had seen on other papyrus documents.
 
It looked as if the printing had been done only yesterday.

“In case you’re wondering, it’s part of a legal document.
 
A deed to some land being granted to a noble by the pharaoh,” added Dr. Crane.

Directing her attention to one of the objects on the nearest table, he held up a frame containing a large piece of dull gray paper on which were lines of tightly packed writing.

“In 1215 a bunch of barons ganged up on King John of England and forced him to sign the Magna Carta.
 
This is the original document with the king’s signature and all.
 
There are four surviving copies from that time.
 
We compared it with the copy in the British Library.
 
It is identical.
 
You will note the ink seems fresh.
 
It is.

“This,” he said, putting down the framed document and picking up a small, dull gold colored rock, “is the first piece of gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.
 
John Marshal was supervising the construction of a sawmill and found this in a creek.
 
It started the gold rush in California.

“That dirty black top hat was worn by President Lincoln while he gave his Gettysburg Address.
 
Those sparkly red shoes were worn by Judy Garland in 1938’s ‘Wizard of Oz’.
 
That somewhat battered sword there belonged to Hernán Cortés
, the guy that overthrew the Aztecs and conquered Mexico.
 
It has bloodstains on it.

“That beat up wooden box there was the portable writing desk designed and used by Thomas Jefferson.
 
In 1776 he wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence on this desk.
 
And that frame next to it has the actual first draft.”

He was warming up to his task, and apparently enjoyed showing off the items they plucked from history.

“This is a freshly minted 1804 silver dollar.”

“Is it worth much?” she asked.

“Well, actually, quite a bit.
 
Has an interesting history.
 
I’m sort of a coin collector and have studied this one.
 
In 1804 the US Mint records indicated that 19,750 silver dollars were minted.
 
However, it was the practice at the time to use old dies until they were worn out.
 
All of those coins minted in 1804 were dated 1803.
 
Silver dollars with the 1804 date did not appear until 1834 when a set of coins was minted as gifts to certain rulers in Asia.
 
The mint employees knew that 1804 was the last date for those types, so they produced a set with that date.
 
They only produced seven copies since they were supposed to be gifts, not for release to the public.
 
Then, between 1858 and 1860, a number of these coins were illegally struck by a Mint employee.
 
He sold them to collectors in a store in Philadelphia.
 
However, Mint officials hunted them down and seized all but one.

“Anyway, to answer your question, the last one sold at auction fetched just over four million dollars.”

Tamara pursed her lips.
 
“I can see the potential for acquiring a great deal of wealth with your time machine.”

“Oh, we take precautions to assure that none of these items ever gets out of here,” Stryker immediately said.

“Okay, if you’re not making money with it, what do you use the machine for?”

“Mostly for research,” Crane said.
 
“We have a small staff of university professors here who are collecting artifacts for study.
 
We’re making wonderful strides in many areas of historical study.
 
And we are constantly working on ways to make the process faster and less resource draining.
 
You’d be surprised at how much electrical power the Machine requires.
 
And lots of computer time.
 
Oh, and we don’t have any fancy name for it; we just call it ‘the Machine’.”

“And that’s all?” she asked them, her investigator’s nose sensing there was something more.

“Ah, well, there are certain government agencies who use some of our resources,” Stryker said.
 
“Of course, I cannot...”

“Tell me who they are or what they are doing,” she interrupted.
 
“I’m familiar with the routine.
 
I don’t have a need to know.”

“I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course.
 
Well, this has been interesting, especially that little side tour into the world of numismatics.
 
I think I have an idea what your project is all about.
 
If you’ll just provide me with a desk and computer terminal, I’ll get about my job.
 
And I’d like to have one of your staff available to answer questions and assist.”

“I’ll attend to it that immediately,” Dr. Crane offered.
 
“You do realize, of course, that everything you’ve seen and heard is classified at the highest level?”

“Of course.
 
I won’t say a word to anyone,” she said as she made a zipper motion across her lips.
 
She smiled at them.

As they walked down the corridor, she suddenly asked, “Is the project name what I think it is?”

“You mean Project Dry Wells?” Crane smiled widely.

“Yes.
 
Would that happen to be a reference to H.G. Wells?”

His smile widened.
 
“Of course.
 
He was the author of ‘The Time Machine’, wasn’t he?”