One Second Per Second Read online

  “You know, Bess just came in, uninvited,” I say. “At first I thought it was you. I was a happy man.”

  “And just how far did you get before you realized it wasn’t me?”

  “She terrified me at ‘hello’,” I say. Gallie stares at me for a moment then breaks into a smile.

  “I know,” she says. “I saw her walk past my door. I was coming in to rescue you.” I’m aghast.

  “Why did you leave it so long?” I ask. “I was in serious trouble.”

  “I didn’t want to get between a man and his other-worldly wife.”

  “You bitch,” I say. “You were testing me.”

  “I wasn’t, so get over it. Besides, you passed.”

  “If there was a barn or a tree anywhere near, I’d take you behind it.”

  “Would you? Maybe I’d let you.”

  FORTY-THREE

  I join Gallie in her room to nuke a late supper and drink cheap white wine. I propose a toast. “To our 2021 colleagues, assholes to a person, but soon to be freed assholes.” Freed assholes Gallie echoes.

  “You know, I’m not sure I could work in your TMA,” Gallie says putting down her glass.

  “I know. Everyone is so damn collegial here,” I say. “It was the first thing I noticed. Where did we go wrong?”

  “Well, luckily, your nasty work environment didn’t have any serious consequences. Oh ... Kasper Asmus.” I take the nuked food out of the microwave and inspect it with disgust. A dessert compartment of red goo has bubbled over into an orange-colored compartment of first course matter.

  “Is it going to work?” I ask. Gallie’s smile fades.

  “I think so, Joad.”

  “So many people could be hurt. Here and there.”

  “We’ll take every–”

  “And it is a demented plan, isn’t it? I mean, barking.”

  “It’s not like we had to pick between this one and a sensible plan. We’re taking the path of least crazy. It’ll work.”

  “Okay, “ I say, but it’s not okay. It’s several tachyon blasts away from okay. We scrape up our dinners and eat. Then we pour more wine and lie back on the cot, Gallie’s head on my chest. I curl her chestnut hair around my finger. “Abioye is pretty strict on the rules,” I say.

  “She’s TMA through and through,” Gallie replies.

  “So Bess has to go back to 2030 or wherever. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  “No ifs, ands, or buts.” Gallie looks up at me. “It’s why we exist. What we’re all about.”

  “I know,” I say. “And what about me?” Gallie looks away. “I have to go back to 2021 after all this is over, no ifs ands or buts?” She doesn’t answer. “I’m not happy with that. I’m where I want to be right now.” Gallie remains silent. “There’s nothing I want in 2021. All that’s there for me is a crappy, dilapidated house and a job I don’t want any more. And not ... this.” Gallie kisses me. “We can disappear can’t we? Disappear somewhere in time.” Gallie smiles.

  “Floating through time and space forever, star-crossed lovers,” she whispers into my chest.

  “We can do that.”

  “What a nightmare for TMA. Two of their team spitting on every principle they stand for, causing havoc across eternity. Home-grown vandals.”

  “You’re overplanning, Gallie. We just need to vanish. Never be heard from again.” I know I’m not supposed to see it, but Gallie wipes a tear from her eye before she sits up.

  “You know we can’t do that,” she whispers and refills her glass. “I hate it but the universe just didn’t line us up. You’re out there, but you’re ten years old. That’s the one second per second Joad the universe gave me.”

  “The universe? The universe is a dumbass. If it wasn’t, there’d by no job for TMA. You know that, Gallie. We have careers built on correcting the mistakes the universe makes.”

  Gallie smiles. “But not that kind of mistake, Joad.”

  “You really don’t want to fight this?” I ask.

  “Fight it? And then what? Go back to our TMA careers having violated all it stands for?” She strokes my cheek. “Yes I want to fight it. I want to fight it like hell because I love you.” She shakes her head. “But then we’d be different people.”

  The next two weeks are spent planning. This time, I’m inside the tent, but this time, I’m not sure I want to be. Priority 1, the plan has it, is to neutralize Asmus and his arms business. Priority 2 is the rescue mission for the TMA team, provided they haven’t been annihilated by Priority 1. It’s a plan that TMA can’t pull off by itself. The only room secured for videocons with our collaborators is in the accelerator facility, and so each day I have a commute. I get back to the detector facility late in the evenings and Bess, by then aching for company, seeks me out. I do feel sorry for Bess. She, Gallie and I are stuck here, the thought being that we can’t rule out Asmus coming after us. After all, if Asmus would try to take me out just because I agreed with the many who thought he was a weird little shit, imagine what he’d want to do to me for kidnapping his wife.

  So there’s a lot of time to fill with Bess. I tell her about her would-be life in Risley, but avoiding her would-be life with me. Bess enjoys that she was emerging as a world-class winemaker in that other world, because this Bess knows nothing of wine. l tell her about the Dog Star Winery and Vineyard. Den isn’t part of my story.

  Abioye had asked me to be the one who tells Bess about TMA’s plans for us. I do and Bess takes it poorly. “There’s nothing for me in 2030. No, I’m not going back there. Not a chance.” Maybe I’m not the one to make the argument to her.

  “I hear you. Not a hell of a lot for me where I came from, either.”

  “Then fuck them, Joad. You and me. We go where we want to,” Bess says. I want to be right here is what I’m thinking. “I’m alone there. No, fuck them. I’m not going back there.” So that went as well as it deserved to. But her anger inflames mine. These rules that are stealing our lives are rules based on a hard vacuum of comprehension. Someone thinks it’s the safest way to go, but no one really understands a damn about temporal logic. So Asmus alters the timeline–the British beat the Americans and so there’s no American nation. Who’s to say that’s better or worse than our version. So we’re governed by a fuckwit parliament instead of a fuckwit congress? So the Vikings have their asses handed to them and that’s a disaster? What are we trying to preserve? Our own little version? Why? Why should Bess and I be victims of that? There’s no logic behind it. There’s no logic behind anything. So the British win because of the weapons Asmus supplies, and it’s the Second Amendment that helps him get his hands on those weapons, and the Second Amendment is part of the American Constitution. How does any of that work? And this thin comprehension of what’s actually going on is behind the stubborn need for me to be flung back to 2021? No one knows how to stir up a rage in Joad Bevan like Joad Bevan does. And Gallie is always the one who soothes the pain for me. But Bess has only me to lean on. She has been dealt a crappy hand.

  FORTY-FOUR

  We drive in the night between TMA facilities. I’m with Zhivov and in the car ahead is Prasad, Abioye and Gallie. I’m as cold as ice and shivering. We may be about to kill people–a lot of innocent people–if something goes wrong. We drilled this three times over the week. The confidence I felt after the last drill has now drained from me. What’s about to happen is the real thing. It’ll be alright on the night is an expression I’ve heard over the years, yet in my experience the night can innovate screw-ups that the rehearsals just didn’t have the imagination to think of.

  The first drill was a disaster. The accelerator aircraft completely missed its target, accelerating nothing but fresh air, and a missile buried itself at Mach 3 into wasteland ten miles north of the TMA site. That shook us all up and the plan was nearly dropped on the spot. The missile we’re about to launch tonight, the one with a high explosives warhead, won’t be hitting wasteland if it all goes pear-shaped. I open my window to get a breath of night air.
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  The second drill had gone to plan, as far as we could tell. The fighter launched its missile, the accelerator aircraft fired its beam and hit its target, and the missile popped like a bubble. If our programming was right, a few protomammals likely got a shock. The third drill went about the same. But these drills couldn’t validate the full parameter set. Did the missile retain orientation? Did the homing system successfully reset? There’s too much that needs to happen on the far side of the accel–too much we didn’t test–to be confident.

  This is the room we’ve sat in for the past week–drilling, analyzing, anguishing, arguing, reanalyzing. Tonight there’s silence but for the hum of the air conditioner. We wait. We keep waiting. The analog wall clock reaches eleven PM and the large monitor at the foot of the table comes to life to display the US Air Force crest. We’re streaming the Kellerman AF Base.

  “Good evening. Kellerman here.” It’s the voice of Colonel Ahmed.

  “Roger that,” Zhivov replies.

  “We’re counting down 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Stand by.”

  We look at each other. No words are spoken. Abioye, who is usually the epitome of calm and cold reason, is biting her fingernails. We may find out what her talk-out-loud voice sounds like before the night is over. I begin to rock in my chair and immediately get a disapproving look from Gallie. Is it too late to come up with a better plan? One slightly less insane than the guy we’re trying to neutralize? Yes, it is too late. It’s much too late. I rock again. Gallie will just have to deal with it. Nothing is in our hands at this point. We decided on it, we planned it, we brought together the team to deploy it, and now what the plan requires is that we sit dumbly and wish that we’d kept in touch with a god to pray to. The Air Force crest has vanished and now the screen is dark and grainy but for yellow digits in the top left corner counting down from 4 minutes and 12 seconds. I hear indistinct voices in the background and over them Ahmed announces “Four minutes.” Right here we seem to be breaking the one second per second rule in that this seems eternal. Prasad stands and leans against the wall. I see Gallie is now rocking in her chair and I shake my head at her. She smiles.

  In the grainy image an object becomes discernible and a crosshairs appears on it. “Target fixed,” Ahmed says. The object is the outline of the Leatown Resort and Spa. If only those poor bastards knew.

  “The evacuation happened?” I ask.

  “Of course it did,” Zhivov replies. “As far as we know. Just relax Toad.” This means that the resort occupants had been bussed away en masse (“as far as we know”) in response to a fake bomb threat, although fake is not exactly the right word here. I stand up and pace.

  “Accel flight positioned,” I hear Ahmed say. Then I hear a second voice.

  “Confirm, Kellerman,” she says. I know her voice from the drills, but not her name. She’s the commander of the second aircraft–the one carrying the accelerator. Hell, this can’t work. What were we thinking? “Euler orientation for accel is set and confirmed.” Okay, this ensures the missile has the same orientation after it’s acceled and comes out the other side–if it works.

  “Four, three, two, ...” Ahmed counts down “... one, launch.” I hear a faint voice saying launch confirmed. A set of numbers appears at the bottom on the monitor. The first figure is the elevation of the missile. That’s the one that has all my attention. If that number hits zero, then a resort and spa becomes a crater. “Eleven seconds to accel ... ten, nine ... standing by to switch homing signal ... seven, ...” Okay, so at the moment of acceleration, the homing system needs to deactivate and then reactivate, and then the destination becomes an eighteenth century mansion instead of a twentieth century spa. In theory, just fine, provided the missile comes out at the correct orientation. “ ... five, four three, ...”

  “Targeted.” It’s the woman’s voice. I’m tracking: 17,000 feet, 16,000 feet. “Beam on,” she says. I’m not breathing. 15,000 feet, 14,000 feet. Jesus. Way too low. “That’s a miss,” she says calmly.

  “Fuck,” Zhivov says just before me. Abioye jumps to her feet.

  “Instruct to abort?” Ahmed asks. At least it sounds like a question.

  “Negative, retargeting.” 12,000 feet, 11,000 feet. My hands are on my head and my heart is hammering hard on my rib cage. 10,000 feet. “That’s a hit.” The elevation counter freezes at 10,000 feet.

  “Agghh,” I shout, but it’s drowned by cheers. Gallie grabs me for a tight hug. Prasad’s fists are raised in victory and Abioye’s hands part so we can see her face again.

  “That was some bullshit,” Zhivov says.

  “Bullshit indeed,” says Prasad. Then Gallie shushes us as the female voice begins to report out.

  “Orientation, spatial and temporal coordinates all within tolerance,” she says with a casual professionalism. “Sorry about the hiccup.” This woman must have liquid nitrogen in her arteries. In my mind’s eye I see the fireball that devours the mansion and its arsenal. I see Asmus evaporate at its white hot core. I see the barn untouched and its occupants enjoying the fireworks. I see a smoldering crater. It would be more than nice if what I’m seeing anything approaches what actually happened.

  FORTY-FIVE

  There’s a certain joie de vivre among us that’s probably unjustified, but I’ll take it. The strike was timed for one week (local time) after the day Gallie, Bess and I escaped. The thinking was that that was enough margin to ensure a slight temporal miss wouldn’t put us in the target zone. The temporal logic of that thinking is a quagmire but I couldn’t have begun to come up with a counterargument. Then, the rescue mission is timed for three days after the strike. Again, that gives some margin, but not too much because the TMAers are not the survivalist types. Of course, three days on the far end translates to as much time as we need at our end. We just need to program the accelerators to land at the right time and place.

  In the euphoric aftermath of the strike, Abioye and Prasad relax the lockdown. They’re not dumb enough to think that Asmus or his goons wouldn’t have plenty of time between our escape and the strike to come after us. But they’re not immune to the zeitgeist of the moment and must have figured they’d take a few risks.

  I could have visited the Bevans again–my home, my father’s bar, myself. The thought of introducing Bess to my dad was an amusing one. A weakness of mine has always been that I’m prone to act on amusing thoughts. Profound thoughts, compassionate thoughts, pragmatic thoughts, spiritual thoughts, creative thoughts, erotic thoughts are all fine, but any imbecile can have those. Amusing thoughts are the ones I respect. But this amusing thought is just too hazardous. After all, Bess is the woman who put a bullet into someone out of sheer impatience. I don’t think much of my father but I don’t want to find out what Bess might do to a man who she thinks prevented a blissful married life.

  The first couple of outings had been no more than car rides around town–Bess, Gallie and myself–with Gerard Bruce, the head of security, as chauffeur. Bruce carried a hand gun, and I had seen him put a much larger, nastier weapon into the car trunk. The excitement of getting off the TMA site, even for nothing more than a ride, had been exhilarating. But now, the third outing is the one Bess had been lobbying for. It’s a trip to the vineyards.

  Bess has a yearning to learn about her once and never-was career as a talented winemaker. It’s both funny and sad. Funny that you’d want to reminisce about something that never happened to you. Sad because for all the marital misery, it would have been a better life than the one she actually had.

  We drive up the slope of Red Mountain, and where in my day there will be twenty wineries, today there are only a couple. I point out to Bess where her Dog Star Winery will one day stand. Her smile is silly and beguiling. There are no vines there yet, just undeveloped land. I think of the times I’d been late to arrive there, to Bess’s savage irritation. But that’s just a dream now.

  The winery we pick is in the style of a rustic Tuscan villa. We sit at the tasting room bar and sample the winery’s
offerings, making appreciative and engaged sounds as the server talks about terroir and a winemaker who gave up a career in accounting for all of this. Through large plate glass windows we see acres of vines under the encroaching shadow of the mountain top as the sun begins to set. I look behind us to see Bruce sitting at his own table, on which sits a plastic bottle of water. He’s surveying the other guests with comic suspicion.

  Bess wangles an introduction to the winemaker and is deep in conversation with him. If I know Bess, and if this Bess is like the one I know, then she’s contemplating a revival of the career she never had. But maybe it’s less innocent than that. He seems to be under her spell. It’s weirdly like home. I had never enjoyed wine stuff–the endless releases, events, parties–yet being here has a comforting familiarity. I always found the wine industry to be its own cure because, ultimately, it’s about nice booze.

  Gallie and I are left to ourselves. Having downed a couple of indistinguishable yet apparently very different Cabernets gives me courage to take another run at the reasons I should stay. It doesn’t take long to realize that this was a mistake, and so I shut up and just hold Gallie’s hand. We speak nothing of matters TMA, of the strike or of the rescue plans. Instead, I learn about Gallie’s cat and Boris’s kindness in fostering it. It’s a topic so ridiculous for the Gallie I’ve come to know that I hang on every word. It seems that a man I had first taken as something of a little prick is really quite an Assisi. I admit that Boris has grown on me. I’ve never mentioned to anyone the high mantle that he was to assume, but wondered how many TMAers I might have come to respect if I’d gotten past my first impressions. Yet changing the timeline is one thing, but changing Joad Bevan, now there’s a serious challenge.