The 9/11 Machine Read online

  Don pointed at the screens.

  “0.11 variance. It worked.” He picked up a handheld radiation detector and waved it around the metal table where, only moments before, the hamster cage had sat. “Nothing. No residual K-band energy.”

  Terry looked over the monitors, and Don knew what he was doing: looking for problems to overcome, mysteries to solve. Terry was a valuable research assistant. It was too bad.

  “Jeez, boss,” Terry said. “I can’t believe you went ahead and tested it. Our development plan says we don’t try for a live animal test for at least another two months. Where did you send the cage?”

  “Two minutes, uptime.”

  Terry glanced back at the metal table. “Wow.”

  Don nodded. “Can you check the power consumption?”

  Terry nodded and went into the computer lab, returning in a moment.

  “You’re not going to like it—we used seven megawatts. That’s like three months of power usage in twenty seconds.”

  “Con Ed?”

  Terry shook his head. “Nothing yet, but I’m sure they’ll be calling. Our batteries are still nearly full, but it will take six hours to build them back up to full without causing a blackout,” Terry said, nodding at the massive power transformers on the far end of the main floor.

  Don looked at his watch and then pointed at the table. “Here it comes.”

  They watched the empty table as the room began to vibrate again. This time, it wasn’t the machine or the massive amounts of power coursing through it—no, this was something different. It felt like nature itself was vibrating around them.

  “There it comes,” Don said.

  He and Terry watched as the cage began to form. At first, it looked like a trick of the light. To Don, it looked like a shadow that grew darker and darker until it took on details and sharp edges and finally resolved into an ordinary cage. Don walked up to the table, seeing the hamster scooting around in the cage. Terry picked up the cage and took out the hamster, checking him for any problems.

  “He looks good,” Terry said, smiling. “Well, it’s no Delorean, but it’ll do.”

  Don smiled. “Yeah. I guess that makes me Doc Brown.”

  “Then I’m Marty,” Terry said. “And if you’re Doc Brown, you need much wilder hair.”

  Don sighed, looking at his watch, and decided. The project was as complete as they could make it, considering how much time and effort had gone into it. Now, it was just a matter of executing the plan.

  Don turned to Terry. “Are the schematics updated?”

  “Yeah, I just finished entering the last changes related to the stronger accelerator supports. We just used the last settings, and they worked, so I think they’re finished, finally.”

  “Good, good,” Don said, glancing around at the machine. His mind was racing now, a hundred things to think about. “Can you burn those to a CD? Actually, make me five copies of the whole set of plans and all the testing data. And double-check the CDs to make sure the files aren’t corrupted. I want to do a full off-site backup tonight.”

  Terry nodded and headed off, then stopped. “CDs or DVDs? DVDs will hold a lot more.”

  “Yeah, but make it CDs, okay?” Don replied. “Five full sets of all the data.”

  Terry nodded and walked out.

  After he left, Don tapped at the keyboard, making a few more notes on the clipboard, then went into the office. Don spent a few minutes scanning the office for any paperwork, schematics, or drawings that he had inadvertently left, but he found none. He took a moment to sit at his computer, where he checked his email a final time, then stood and disconnected the laptop from the monitor.

  Turning, he kneeled down and spun the dials, opening the grey safe that stood on the floor behind his desk. He took out a large black duffel bag, stuffing his laptop and the final notes from the clipboard inside. Then, he turned and carefully removed a black, drum-shaped device from the safe and walked out to the machine, setting the drum on the floor next to the particle accelerator—he’d had the device made years ago and had forgotten how heavy it was.

  Don returned to the office and made a call to the front desk, asking the only guard on duty to walk the building’s exterior perimeter. Don said he’d thought he heard noises coming from the river side of the parking lot. After the guard said he would investigate, Don hung up and got his bag, turned off the lights in his office, and took the bag out to the machine, setting it on the table.

  To an outsider, the items contained in the bag would seem a strange collection, even if he knew Don was leaving on a trip. First was the Toshiba laptop, three large binders of printed materials and schematics related to the machine, and an empty CD storage case, which he took out and set on the table. There was a small case of toiletries and, rubber banded together, ten sealed boxes of contact lenses. There were also several thick, padded envelopes containing four iPads and various other electronics, along with several thick paperback books.

  At the bottom of the leather duffel bag was a silver attaché case. Don took out the silver case, set it on top of the bag, and carefully opened it. $500,000 in small bills, along with a small black velvet bag of uncut diamonds and three small containers of ten-ounce platinum bars. The case contained one more item that Don removed and slipped into his pocket.

  Don closed the attaché case and put it back inside the bag as Terry walked in, shaking his head as he handed the small stack of CDs to Don.

  “It all fit on three CDs, so you’ve got fifteen there, five full sets,” Terry said.

  Don nodded and began sliding the CDs into the storage case.

  “I was checking the Internet while I was burning those disks,” Terry said. “Looks like the U.S. military is massing ships offshore. SuSSSpposedly, the Marines are preparing to land forces, or at least that’s what Fox News is saying. There’s a big uproar from the U.N., but Cheney isn’t listening.”

  Don nodded and went back over to the table.

  “I swear,” Terry continued, “I think this world is just going crazy. What’s the bag for?”

  Don sighed. This was the worst part of the whole plan, but it couldn’t be avoided. The machine was ready, he was ready, and this world was going down the crapper, and fast. How long until there was another attack? What if the Houston bomb had been detonated over Manhattan instead? If that had happened, then it would already be too late. Don couldn’t delay any longer. There was no turning back.

  He had to.

  Don turned, a small gun in his hand.

  “Sorry,” Don said quietly to his friend Terry, and shot him.

  Terry’s eyes went wide, his hands going to his chest. The red stain spread fast across his white shirt, and he fell awkwardly to the floor.

  “Sorry, Terry, but I’ve gotta go.” Don said to the man on the floor, and fired again, the sound of the gun louder this time.

  Don turned away and slowly put the gun and the CD case into his duffel bag, and zipped the bag up, placing it on the machine’s target platform.

  He walked around Terry’s prone figure, over to the control panel, and activated the program. Don tried to ignore the smell of gunpowder hanging in the still air. He tapped at the machine a final time, setting the coordinates and maximizing the power usage. It would probably cause a temporary localized blackout, but it couldn’t be avoided. He needed the power more than these people could possibly understand.

  He tried to ignore the moans coming from the floor nearby.

  Don walked over to the drum-shaped device and opened the top of the unit. He could hear the contents sloshing around inside—there were two large containers of methyl alcohol, a central explosive, and a timer, which he dialed to ten minutes and pressed Start. The bomb began counting down. He placed it between the control panel and the primary electrical systems of the particle accelerator, near the target platform.

  Don walked back to the computer lab one more time, tapping instructions into the small networked server station to begin a full system wipe. T
here was no way to be sure that the fire would destroy the computers, so he detached the network storage units and brought them back into the main room, setting them on the floor next to the bomb.

  Don suddenly remembered to check his wallet.

  Quickly, he pulled it out of his rear pocket as the timer counted to eight minutes remaining on the bomb. He fished frantically through his wallet and finally found something, a small folded scrap of paper. Don relaxed and smiled and looked at the scrap of paper for a long moment, his eyes shining, and then put it away.

  He glanced over again at Terry, but the man wasn’t moving.

  There was nothing more to do.

  He looked around one more time and then walked to the control station. He started the sequence, then pushed the large green Actuate button.

  Immediately, the machine began to cycle up again, faster and louder this time. He was using a lot more power than during his experiments with the Post-its or the hamster cage. His calculations needed to include the heavy duffel bag along with his weight.

  Don walked over and lay down on the table, clutching the bag to his chest.

  The lights in the room dimmed as energy poured into the machine from the batteries and the live power conduits. Above and around him, a hazy blue glow began to surround his table. He saw the room around him begin to vibrate, but strangely, he and the duffel bag and the table they were on were perfectly still. The table was connected to the machine—only items on the table should be affected by the temporal fold. Suddenly, there were the huge booming cracks, but much louder this time, coming from inside the machine. It sounded like ice shattering, or his eardrums—he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to reach up and cover his ears, but he didn’t want to loosen his grip on the bag—without the contents, he would be a newborn, naked in a new world.

  The room around him began to fade, and one of the fluorescent lights above the machine exploded in a shower of sparks. He turned on the table to look at them, dropping, so many of them, dancing off the floor and the batteries and the exterior of the particle accelerator and—

  Part Two

  2.1

  A Positive Outcome

  —fell two feet onto cold pavement.

  For a moment, he just lay there. The room swam around him, the floor tilting like a carnival ride. Don held onto the bag, gripping it tightly, until the room slowed and finally stopped spinning altogether.

  Slowly, he sat up.

  The massive warehouse was empty.

  The machine, the computers, the batteries that had stored up massive amounts of electrical power—they were all gone, evaporated into the timeline.

  No Terry, bleeding to death on the concrete floor. No security guards, no technicians, no lab assistants.

  “Damn.”

  Dr. Donald Ellis stood gingerly, his legs wobbly, and walked slowly across the expansive floor of the warehouse. He had to know, right away. Don approached the large rusty doors nervously and put one hand on the door and paused, sighing.

  “Come on. Be there.”

  He pushed the doors open, stepping out into a parking lot that he already knew would be there. He shaded his eyes from the bright sky and looked.

  He saw the expanse of the East River flowing beyond the shoreline. And across the river, rising against a beautiful blue cloudless sky, the twin towers of the World Trade Center dominated the Manhattan skyline.

  2.2

  Mikel’s Theory of

  Non-Interaction

  Ellis stood outside his old home in Jericho, New York. He’d been holed up in the warehouse for the last seven months, but now it was time. His key worked, as it should. He slid it in the door and let himself inside.

  The house looked much like Don remembered it, only messier. The floor was littered with toys, and there was a pile of unmatched shoes in the foyer next to the door. He’d forgotten what it was like to have a child around the house—nothing was ever in the proper place.

  Dr. Ellis wandered around a house that was his and yet, at the same time, completely alien. Everything he recognized, yet everything seemed different. All the detritus of normal family life—an empty glass on the coffee table, piles of papers and books and mail on every flat surface, toys strewn about the living room. He stepped on one of Tina’s toys and jumped.

  There was a stack of Sarah’s magazines on the coffee table, magazines that he had forgotten she liked to read. Tina had left drawing materials spread over the entire dining room table, the same table that he’d used only days ago for stock research.

  Actually, the stock research hadn’t happened two days ago—it had happened ten years in the future. It had already happened, and yet it was a decade before it would happen. Or maybe in this timeline, he would never use the table for that purpose at all.

  He’d heard once on Star Trek that time travel can play hell with verb tenses.

  Ellis had checked his schedule from early 2001 and chosen this stretch of days around April 5. It was a time when his younger version would be off work for three days because of some construction and painting in his building at the university. He remembered those three days well—he had enjoyed playing tennis and doing projects around the house that Sarah was always after him to finish.

  Unfortunately, this time around, his younger self would be too busy to tackle the honey-do list.

  Actually, there were three theories about this aspect of time travel, and he wasn’t sure which one would be proven in the next few minutes. He had high hopes for the first theory and was dreading the second. The third, he’d already disproven.

  The first theory was that everything that ever happened and ever would happen was confined to a single time stream. Any potential “travelers” through time would enter the same time stream and be incorporated into it. This was the classic “go back in time and kill your grandfather” time conundrum that people loved to quote.

  The second theory posited branching timelines. In this scenario, time streams would overlap, unless a major event caused a break; if that happened, the time stream would branch into two distinct futures.

  A third theory stated that a time traveler wouldn’t be able to interact with the past, because “time” itself would prevent him from changing things. To the time traveler, everything around him would appear much like a three-dimensional hologram that he could observe but never interact with. One version of this theory supposed that ghosts were time travelers, destined to endlessly observe the world without being able to change it.

  Ellis had already disproved theory three, Mikel’s Theory of Non-Interaction: over the last seven months, he’d secured a lease on the warehouse, created multiple investment accounts, and begun staffing and construction efforts. Most of the money from the duffel bag was already at work, growing in value on investments that seemed to be making enormous amounts of profits and funneling those gains into another LLC he had set up, this one named “Blossom Investments.”

  But had he already created a new universe, or was he just changing the one he was already in? He tended to think of the original world where he was from as Timeline #1 and this as Timeline #2. That would mean he was Ellis #1, and the man driving home from the tennis club right now would be Ellis #2.

  Nothing Don had done yet since he’d gone back in time had affected his previous life, as far as he could tell. It had taken months to get everything rolling—a new identity, the money, the warehouse. But it came down to this—when he finally talked to his younger self, there would be three possible outcomes.

  One, he would cease to exist.

  Two, he would suffer a brain aneurysm and die.

  Three, nothing would happen, other than extreme confusion on the part of his younger self.

  Dr. Ellis cleared Tina’s mess off of the dining room table and set a couple of things down that he’d been carrying. He heard the sound of a car and turned, watching it pull into the driveway, and walked around the counter and bar stools that separated the dining room from the kitchen. He continued into the f
amily room—the wall-mounted TV wasn’t there yet; instead, a painting hung.

  Sarah had bought the painting at an auction, but he hadn’t been able to bear having it up after she died. He remembered how excited she’d been—

  The front door opened, and Dr. Donald Ellis walked in, carrying a tennis bag with a racquet handle sticking out. He set it down, closed the door behind him, and walked through the living room without looking up, flipping through a stack of mail. Then he glanced up and saw the items on the dining room table.

  One was a pile of CDs, along with a box of contact lenses. On top lay an Apple iPad 2. The other pile was made up entirely of banded stacks of money; the pile about six inches high.

  “What the hell?” he asked, glancing around. He set the mail down and picked up the iPad, turning it around, flipping it over to look at the back.

  “Hi, Donald.”

  The younger Dr. Ellis glanced up and saw himself, an older version of himself, walking around the refrigerator, his hands raised.

  “What? Who the hell are you—oh Jeez!” the younger Ellis began, stumbling backwards. He backed up against the sink and his hands, moving on their own, knocked a plate from the counter onto the ground. It shattered, loudly.

  The older Ellis kept his hands up.

  “Don’t lose it, Tiger,” he said.

  The younger Ellis looked like he was moments from throwing up.

  “Mom used to call us Tiger, remember?” the older Ellis said slowly. “It’s me—you, just a little older.”

  “What?” the younger Ellis said, looking down at the plate and bending to pick up the pieces. “This can’t be happening—it’s a dream, or a goddamned nightmare,” the younger man said, putting the broken shards in the trash.

  “Ask me something only we would know,” the older Ellis said, smiling and putting his hands down.

  The younger man nodded. “Cognitive deduction. OK, but it won’t prove anything if you’re a simple hallucination. Do you remember the Sadie Hawkins dance in sophomore year?”