The 9/11 Machine Read online

  The two men sat at the table, silent, as the customers and staff bustled around them, ignored. John heard several drink orders called out as he read through the speech again.

  At one point in the congressional record, there was a nice statement from Representative Grucci of New York—John had worked with him for years at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Grucci mentioned a difficult and expensive environmental restoration of the facility that Marburger had overseen. The tone of voice in the transcribed document was distinctly Grucci’s, something that John thought would be very difficult to replicate, unless you knew the man personally. His voice had a Brooklyn accent that was very distinct.

  The preponderance of the items in the report added up to the genuine article. But how could that be?

  The man across from him finally spoke up, sighing. “You will be confirmed, but it will be too late.”

  John Marburger nodded, glancing at the report and reading quietly. “Near the end of my testimony, I say that ‘The most pressing of these needs is an adequate and coordinated response to the vicious and destructive terrorist attacks of September 11.’ I don’t know what to say.”

  Ellis nodded, sitting up. “You’ll only get into power after it happens—you’ll be on cleanup duty. We need to go to your office and get started. Now.”

  “I don’t have an office—” he started to say.

  “They’ve set you up in the Old Executive Office Building,” Ellis interrupted, “while they’re waiting for the nomination to be announced.”

  John looked at him.

  Ellis continued. “I have the information that you and the Bush administration need to prevent this thing from ever happening.”

  “What knowledge?”

  The tall man reached into his jacket and took out a single CD, placing it on the table between them. On it was written “9/11.”

  2.4

  Foreknowledge

  Ellis followed Dr. Marburger as they exited the coffee shop and walked toward the ornate Old Executive Office Building. Built next to the White House in 1888 for a growing war department, the building was now used to house White House support staff.

  Marburger entered and signed him in. “You were a professor of physics and electrical engineering for three decades?” Ellis said to Marburger as they stepped onto an old elevator.

  Marburger pushed the button. “Yes.”

  “So what do you think of the idea of a machine that can project items or people through the time barrier?”

  Marburger looked at him—they were alone in the elevator, or Ellis wouldn’t have asked.

  “I’d say you were crazy.”

  Ellis smiled. When the elevator dinged, they got off and walked down a long, ornately appointed corridor, passing two security guards, who nodded at Dr. Marburger. The carpet was plush, muffling their steps. They reached a door with a temporary sign on it that said “OST/SA Appointee” in hand-drawn letters.

  “Can’t they get you a better sign than that?” Ellis asked, smiling.

  Marburger shot him a look and they entered the office. Marburger sat at the computer, and Don handed him the CD case. Marburger put the CD in the tray, and the computer began reading it.

  “The password is ‘Buttercup,’” he said. “One word.”

  A prompt appeared, and Marburger entered the code. Detailed schematics appeared on the screen. Ellis watched, narrating what he saw.

  “These are the machine schematics. I spoke with the man who built and used it—he said that the machine took him almost ten years to construct, but that they were improving and refining it as they went. He estimated it would take about three years to build it again.”

  Marburger tabbed through screen after screen of complicated schematics. Ellis knew he was looking for details and subsystems to give him a better handle on the veracity of the plans.

  Ellis continued. “It uses a small particle accelerator to fold the quantum field at the specific location where the item or person is located. Only objects inside the fold are displaced in time. The amount of power placed into the quantum field determines the actual amount of displacement.”

  Marburger nodded.

  “Is it multidimensional?”

  “No, but the other Dr. Ellis said in his notes that he thought it could be perfected to do that. Time machine and teleporter, all in one. But his machine could only move objects through time, not spatial dimensions.”

  Ellis walked around and sat down in a folding chair. The office appointments left a lot to be desired, but it made sense—this wouldn’t be his office after the nomination, but it would do for now.

  “And it works. Clearly.” It was a statement, more than a question from Marburger, but Ellis nodded anyway.

  “It works. Or worked, at least the one time,” Ellis said. “I watched the man die right in front of me. We only had a few minutes to talk before the other Ellis died, or whatever it was that happened. Temporal physics is my specialty, but it was still very disturbing. I’ve theorized that two versions of one person cannot coexist on the same timeline, and this person was an older version of me. Still, watching another version of yourself fade out of existence is…disturbing.”

  Marburger looked at the screen, then at him.

  “Have you started it yet? Building a machine?”

  Ellis shook his head, obviously waiting for the question. “No. I’m not building it, not without the government’s help. I can’t afford it—the only reason my counterpart could finish it was because he was so driven.”

  “By the loss of your family,” Marburger asked.

  Ellis nodded, looking out the window, quiet for a long moment before speaking again. “I can’t even imagine it. Now, I hug them both every night, can’t get enough of them. Can’t tell them why, of course. They must think I’m nuts.”

  Marburger smiled. “They’re not the only one.”

  “Pull up the second file, John. Same password.”

  Marburger tapped at the keyboard. Ellis couldn’t see the screen, but the look on Marburger’s face said it all.

  “Shit,” the man said quietly.

  Ellis gave him a few minutes to look at the information—he’d been through it all a dozen times, incredulous at first but absorbing more and more information with each pass. It was a horrible day in this country’s future. Anything done to mitigate it would be a blessing.

  After some silence, with Marburger tabbing through the headlines, short video clips, full-color photos of so much loss, Ellis spoke up.

  “That’s why he came back—not because of his, ah, our family. The government was, or will be, crippled, with the loss of half of Congress and so much damage to the Pentagon. The economy will take years to recover. It will take months to replace the congressmen lost on that day with appointees and new, emergency elections that, in some places, violate the constitution. The Bush administration will founder in the darkness, shocked by the enormity of their challenge and without the steady guidance of Congress, who is reeling from its own tragedies. Cheney will take power in 2003 but not before—well, there are roads this country should not go down. This is one of them.”

  Marburger nodded.

  “And the damage to the country will be long lasting,” Ellis said. “The economy will be broken by the loss of the World Trade Center, and New York City’s economy will go into the toilet. Mayor Giuliani and the rest of his emergency team will be killed inside Building 7, the location of their emergency bunker on the 23rd floor, when it collapses after being hit by debris from the falling North Tower. But the psychological effects of the sneak attack are the worst. The U.S. military, riled by a massive and deadly attack on their headquarters, follows a hawkish president on the road to war. Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines—anywhere where al Qaeda is seen as a threat. The U.N. protests, governments fall, Cheney seizes control…. The list goes on and on.”

  Marburger stared at him.

  “It’s too much to even fathom.”

  Ellis nods. “I know. I kn
ow just how you feel. Take the information, digest it, and then make a suggestion to the president—he needs to meet with me, with us, and discuss the next steps. This attack must be prevented.”

  Marburger nodded, agreeing, but then looked up at him. “I don’t know the president that well. I don’t know how he would react. I can’t get in to see him unless it’s scheduled a month ahead of time. They aren’t going to let—”

  “No, that isn’t going to work,” Ellis shook his head. “You’ll convince them. Or thousands will die.”

  Marburger nodded, looking at the screen again.

  “And after the attack is averted—do you think you can build it?”

  Ellis smiled. “You think like I do. Yes, I think I can. I had a little time to talk to him before he died, and all of the improvements are there, in the schematics. Take them, discuss them with your counterparts, and then please contact me—I’m staying at the Willard.”

  2.5

  Dr. Raines

  He had been having an early breakfast in the Windows on the World restaurant, but now the entire world was on fire. Smoke poured from every vent, and three of the windows had been broken out. The staff was gathered around the open windows, gulping at the fresh air. Others had crawled into corners of the room, waiting for rescue.

  But, somehow, he knew rescue would never come.

  As Ellis walked to the windows, a woman standing too close to the edge lost her grip and fell away from the open window. He heard her screams as they faded into the deafening wind that buffeted those of them gathered around.

  “We should climb down the outside,” one person said, panic in her voice.

  “No, it’s too slippery,” another person said.

  “What about the stairs?” another one asked.

  A tall black man shook his head. “They’re blocked. Jammed—too many people.”

  “When will the firefighters get here?” the woman asked.

  Ellis shook his head, speaking up for the first time. “They’re not coming. They won’t make it—this entire building is going to collapse.”

  The others looked at him, their eyes wild.

  “No, no!” she shouted at him.

  “It’s true,” he said. Ellis felt the tears streaming from his eyes—the smoke was too much, and the wind was roaring in from outside. “It will all fall down. Nothing can be done. The firefighters will be killed, too.”

  He stepped around her, to the open window, his legs not under his control.

  “I don’t want to die that way,” he said, and stepped to the open window, which used to stretch from the floor to the ceiling. The wind pulled at his clothes.

  He looked out—the entire city of New York was spread out before him like an endless, living blanket of streets and buildings. It was like looking down at the most detailed model one could possibly imagine—the moving cars, the little people, the boats creating wakes on the distant Hudson. Ellis looked straight down between his shoes—it was impossibly far down to the fire trucks and police cars. He saw 5 World Trade Center below him—people were streaming from it like ants. He knew that when the building he was in collapsed, massive pieces of it would fall on the other building, crushing it, killing everyone inside.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another person at another open window. She was clinging to the metallic skin of the skyscraper, panicked, but when she saw him, she seemed to calm. She looked at him steadily, nodded and then let go, falling backwards into the air. He watched her fall, and her eyes held his for a long moment until she disappeared into the smoke.

  Don turned to say something to the people inside, to warn them about jumping and how he had seen the others fall on the videos he had seen, videos of the tragedy that had run over and over again on the news. A sudden gust of wind lashed him, and he lost his grip.

  Falling.

  The wind was deafening. He could finally breathe. Between his feet, already far above him, he saw the twisted scar near the top of the building, smoke pouring out. It looked like a blackened wound, the size and shape of the plane that had struck the side of the building only minutes before. Ellis twisted in the air like a cat and saw below him the buildings and the cars and people and—

  “Are you Dr. Raines?”

  The elder Dr. Don Ellis was standing in the warehouse parking lot. He tore his eyes away from the World Trade Center. It was not on fire—it stood proudly against a blue sky. No one was on fire or falling to their deaths. Or leaping from shattered windows. There were no sirens or exhausted firefighters gasping at oxygen masks as the towers fell around them.

  There were no casualties.

  He turned. There was a short delivery driver standing next to him, holding out a clipboard.

  “Ah, I have a delivery you need to sign for, Mr. Raines,” the short man said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “They said you were out here.”

  The elder Dr. Ellis nodded slowly and took the clipboard, remembering to sign his new name. In this timeline, he was not himself, and the younger Ellis was telling everyone that the time-traveling “original” had died. It seemed everyone had bought the story, although he couldn’t be sure. He still got some odd looks from staff when he and the younger Ellis were chatting.

  “Beautiful city, isn’t it?” the delivery guy asked.

  Ellis smiled and handed the clipboard back. “More than you know.”

  The delivery man turned and headed back inside the warehouse. Ellis watched him go and looked at the warehouse—it looked much as it had in the first timeline, but Dr. Ellis had noticed a few differences. It was slightly newer, looking only a little less abandoned. The parking lot that surrounded it looked newer.

  In the first timeline, he had found and rented the warehouse in 2004. It had taken just over five years to build the machine and get it functional. This time, he hoped to build it faster and to make it smaller and with greatly reduced power requirements.

  In this timeline, it was still 2001. He’d noticed upon leasing the warehouse again that there was a large pier, jutting out into the river from Governors Island, the squat military installation that sat in the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan. At some point, over the next three years, the pier would be removed, assuming everything progressed unchanged.

  But some things were the same. Dr. Ellis walked back inside the warehouse and a young man nodded at him from up inside a large metal scaffold—it was Terry, or a younger version of Terry. Dr. Ellis had felt horrible about shooting the other version of him, so he’d found Terry slogging away at a dead-end research fellowship in Newark and asked him to come work for him at Blossom Investments, the new umbrella company.

  “Hey, Terry, how’s it goin’?” Don asked, nodding at the familiar-looking machine above him. Several other men and women bustled around the red and yellow support beams of the particle accelerator. There were differences between the first machine and this one. The particle accelerator was not as wide as before and would require less power. With a completed set of plans and no trial and error or testing required, he could build a machine much more quickly and efficiently.

  Terry looked up and smiled. “We’re looking good, Dr. Raines. The anti-vibration supports are installed under the accelerator. But are you sure they’re really necessary?”

  Ellis smiled. “Yup. Once those are done, get the techs working on the power conduits.”

  Ellis walked off, looking for Stevens, the facilities manager. Ellis had decided that, this time around, he could afford to hire someone else to handle site construction, security, and staffing, as well as help the facility fly under the radar. Ellis had put out feelers at the university campus, asking around for references, and Bruce Stevens had popped up on the radar as a solid man, one who could be trusted. Ellis had liked him immediately and hired him on the spot.

  Stevens was helping keep prying eyes away from the facility. Upon entering the timeline, Ellis had decided there was no need to get the government involved with this machine. He’d tasked his youn
ger version with interfacing with the government, with passing along the important information about 9/11 and the time machine, but they’d agreed to keep Don’s existence, and the existence of their machine, a secret. Don prayed the younger Ellis would be able to convince the Bush government to step in and prevent the horrible events to come. If not, well, that was why they were feverously working to complete this machine—a multimillion-dollar insurance policy, hidden in a nondescript warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront.

  Dr. Ellis found Stevens at the front desk, talking to the guards. Stevens had a background in project management, having helmed several large construction projects up and down the eastern seaboard. Ellis found Stevens’ mix of talents very useful. This was a smaller project than most, Ellis knew, but it was surely the most complicated project Stevens had ever been involved with. And more secretive.

  There was a large sign behind the reception desk, where two security guards sat, that said Blossom Investments, LLC.

  “Stevens,” Ellis said, and the man turned.

  “Ah, Dr. Raines. Good.”

  They walked together back into the primary testing area.

  “This looks great,” Ellis said, indicating the machine under construction.

  “Yes,” Stevens agreed. “The primary construction should be done soon, and you and Terry and the team can get started testing. Terry looks to be finishing the reactor containment system within the week.”

  Ellis nodded, impressed. “Good—that’s well ahead of schedule. With enough money, you can do anything, right? How about the power?

  “All set up, Mr. Raines,” Stevens answered, pointing at the massive power storage batteries that took up a good portion of the floor of the warehouse. In this timeline, the battery technology wasn’t as advanced as when he’d sourced the batteries and capacitors in 2006 for his first machine. Here, in 2001, he was forced to buy what was available and jury-rig it. Of course, he had also used his knowledge of future technology, including battery production, to set up a shell manufacturing company in New Jersey to exploit his future tech. The company would have a “breakthrough” in battery capacitance and size later on this year and bring the “2006” batteries to market in 2002. And Ellis would be his own first customer.