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Post by Injin on Oct 3, 2016 23:58:11 GMT -5
As the sun rose over the horizon on July 15th, 2022, Samantha Dicey was still slumbering. Samantha Dicey was many things; She was a scientist, magna cum laude, and a firm believer in a healthy diet, but what she was not was an early riser. On a day like today, much like many before for her, she was also bad at waking up. Even when her early morning plans had been arranged months in advance. Another thing, audibly, that she was, must have been partially deaf as her alarm kept blaring, demanding that she wake up.
7:30 AM. 7:45 AM.
Just as the clock struck 8, a sunbeam found its way through her blinds and struck her full in the face, the solar energy providing just enough warmth to cause a reaction.
A shudder, a few tics of the eye, and Samantha was awake. Slowly rolling over onto her side, Samantha wiggled a little in the sheets, her body tensing and releasing as she tried to decide if it was worth it to get out of bed. Then her ears picked up that same, insistent noise that she’d been able to ignore and she shot up out of the bed, her legs quickly bringing her over the threshold of the mattress to the floor.
“How late am I this time?” she said aloud to herself, her head whipping around to see the clock. 8:05 AM. Softening, her legs stumbled back a bit and she sat on the bed. 25 Minutes. She had less than a half hour to get to that meeting. Gritting her teeth, she let out a strangled sigh as she got up and made a mad dash for the shower.
Cursing as she dashed past some of her lab equipment, it was days like this that she rued getting a full sized apartment. She lived alone, why did she need this much space? It made it so that she was a full minute slower to get ready into the shower each morning and she could surely better afford two studios next to each other for the time she could save getting ready. But. What were the chances she’d be able to find something like that on her schedule? Calming down a bit, she had already started the shower, giving out a loud sigh as she shed her sleep clothes.
Focus, Samantha, she thought to herself as she stepped into the shower, don’t pay attention in the morning and you’ll break your neck slipping on soap. Or worse. Some part of her knew that something like that had happened before.
For some reason, whenever she rounded the corner into the shower, her body seemed to sway away from the towel rack. Stuff like that, these feelings, hadn’t really begun until after her 21st Birthday. She’d tried to research it before, but there wasn’t any way she could reasonably measure it on her schedule. Maybe when she wasn’t dealing with her current situation.
Breathe, Samantha. She closed her eyes and let the water pour over her for a minute. Like clockwork, her hands started moving after that minute, a whir of soap and shampoo moving through the air around her as the shower continued its downpour. Two minutes later she turned the knob and stepped out, grabbing the towel hanging from the door and dried herself off. Samantha felt out of step. Three seconds slower than yesterday.
A slow grimace emerged on Samantha’s face as she made her way over to the blow dryer, using the same practiced techniques she’d been perfecting for years prepare her for the meeting she was about to head to.
Professor J. W. Lawton was the head of a research firm that had taken an interest in her work and, in their correspondence, wanted to know more about her innovation. Undiscovered Science, Internationale. Of course, you couldn’t just chat about that sort of thing via email. Not with hackers, or worse, targeting research firms as of late. Professor Lawton was known for his secrecy, too, so to get an email from him out of the blue felt like she had truly broken into academia. And, much to her credit, she hadn’t overreacted when the professor, her childhood hero, had contacted her like this. She was truly doing the work of her dreams if he had deemed her worthy of attention.
Samantha had first been shown Professor Lawton’s Search for the Hidden Universe on NOVA when she was a young girl. 12 years old when her family finally moved into an apartment with a good internet connection, she was able to watch NOVA’s online stream for hours and hours after school. It was a dream to even be able to talk to the man in person, let alone in a professional capacity.
And there she was daydreaming again. Thankfully, she noticed as she looked over her hair, her body continued the regiment and her hair was just as she liked it: brushed out to perfection and curled at the ends. While her hair was a little shorter than she was normally comfortable with, the current length was perfect when she needed to wear helmets. Since she didn’t have a car, at least right now, that was a necessity.
Letting out a tired sigh, she donned her bathrobe and walked back through the gallery that was her lab toward her room. As she walked, she looked over to her left and smiled. There it was. Her prime achievement. Why she could afford this apartment and why she had to have a fancy security system in it. The Geo-Historic Obversor of Static Time. The GHOST machine, as she had put it. For now, what the acronym actually meant was still up for discussion given that she’d trademarked the acronym without stating what it actually meant. Not that she’d actually told anyone that she’d built the thing.
Speaking of the GHOST, she’d nearly forgotten to check the machine to see if she’d lived this day before. It was a bad habit, really, to do this. Most of the time she either saw that she’d gone back to the morning with maybe one mystery day gone or, as most mornings revealed, 0 reasons to go back in time. She wasted precious seconds of her time looking at the machine when she could use her few precious moments in the morning with her eyes trained on the device.
Leaning down to check the “timer”, the blood in Samantha’s face turned cold. Her entire body shivered for a moment as she backed up, incredulous at the sight. 919. 919 times she had come back to this particular morning, likely having done the same exact routine again and again.
Today was going to be odd. At least, she rationalized as she walked slowly back to the bedroom, this meant that she was able to get back to the machine after whatever disaster took place today or tomorrow. Or maybe the disaster in question could only be stopped starting today? Unknown. Precious time was wasting, though. She had a meeting to get to.
As she got dressed, the thoughts of the number of times she’d come back to this morning kept her somewhat distracted, a slip of her foot out of her shoe or a stumble as she adjusted her jacket keeping her out of sync. Time was of the essence. It was 8:20. Samantha grabbed her helmet and slipped it on as she headed towards the door.
Out the door with her keys and briefcase, Samantha soon arrived at the bus rack by the bottom of the stairs leading up to her apartment. The bike lock, though intricate, was an easy obstacle to overcome and soon she had stuffed the lock into the leather container and was on her way.
Five minutes of intense and almost skin-ripping movement as her heels came dangerously close to the cogs and gears of her bike was all it took for her to get from her apartment in Midtown to Professor Lawton’s firm at the invisible barrier between Midtown and Downtown. Or, at least, to the bike rack a block away.
There were many reasons why she couldn’t just park her bike by the firm. Having scouted it out the day before, she was secure in the knowledge that A. It had no bike parking spaces B. The guards would not let her park it by one of the railings and C. the time it would take to find a parking space where the guards wouldn’t harangue her for it would make her quite terribly late. She was certain.
The path between, though, had a number of features that hadn’t been around yesterday. Apparently it was the day this area, the street between the city parking spaces and Lawton’s firm, had its weekly farmer’s market. Along each side of the street and just inside the inner core, merchants of all sorts were hawking their wares. Every three spaces there seemed to be either a speaker talking about an adjacent space or some preacher talking about the end of days.
And apparently one guy just handing out fliers and being friendly. Out of place, her body seemed to tell her as she walked through, trying to make her way through the chaos that followed these sorts of events. Almost to the odd one out, her legs took her in a slightly rounded arc around him, interrupted as his eyes locked onto hers.
A surge of guilty and remorse flooded her body, her limbs stiffening for a moment before a pulse of adrenaline kept her walking past the man on the street. What was wrong with her? The man’s presence was utterly repugnant to her yet there was little she could see that was wrong with him. A sharp chin. Piercing blue eyes. An easy smile that was flickering to a frown as she got further away. All of these things bothered her in the sense that she didn’t know why she felt so bad within a few feet of him, but as he called out to her she only walked faster. Maybe it was time to focus on the appointment she needed to keep instead of the disgust she was feeling.
And just like that, once she was in the door, all of those solidly repulsed feelings evaporated. Something felt safe about where she was. Comforting. Yet, as feelings of calm emerged from a sea of doubt and unease, it was tainted, somewhat, but a stiffness of questioning. Perhaps it was because the guard was looking at her like she had two heads.
Finally taking off the helmet, Samantha gulped and explained that she was Professor Lawton’s 8:30 appointment and the security guard relaxed. The good professor hadn’t arrived due to a delay in New York, so she was free to make her way up to his office and wait. Third Floor. Room 322A.
While she had time to wait, Samantha started to think. For the last year or so, her body was giving off odd reactions to what seemed like little things. Her towel rack. The pamphleteer on the street. These things were just moments that happened to many people all the time. So why was she feeling repulsed by being near them? Perhaps her repeated usage of the GHOST machine she’d built had caused some sort of negative feedback to risk. Or, potentially, maybe the machine was heightening her awareness of dangerous situations. If she had time, she’d study this more, but today, with the oddness she’d bumped into thus far, was a day that she had gone back to 919 times.
What could be so important about this day, she wondered as she heard the ding of the elevator down the hall opening up.
Stuffing her helmet, finally, into the briefcase, she stood up, hoping that it was the Professor. There had been enough delays already today. The elevator opened up shortly after that and standing amongst the crowd of intellectuals and staff stood Professor Lawton himself, that iconic bald head and purposeful gait that she had seen as a child growing up making his way down the hall.
He was silent as he approached the door, the shuffle of the others eventually filtering past him overpowering any noise he made. While the Professor’s image was well known, one attribute that escaped most media in this age of technology and public relations was his short stature. It wasn’t until the professor stopped by Samantha that she could see him again given the tallness of the staff.
“Dr. Dicey?”
“Yes, so nice to meet you Professor Lawton” she said, looking him square in the eyes as she shook hands with him. Letting out a nervous breath, she followed him into his office and sat down in the chair he briefly offered.
“I am quite glad that you agreed to this meeting at such a short notice” the professor said, hands crossed as he looked up at Samantha from his heightened chair. “Secrecy in our business is a necessity. I will get straight to the point then”
“Yes, Professor Lawton?”
“J.W. I appreciate the respect, but you have the same degree I do. I digress. Your research on the application of what you have dubbed ‘Geo-Historic Obversoric Static Time manipulation’ has me piqued. As you likely know, I helped found this institution on the basis that all sorts of unconventional topics that might otherwise be ignored by mainstream academia. Your patents and research are just the sort of thing we here at the Undiscovered Science, Internationale are interested in”
“The title of the type of manipulation is still in development, J.W. Lawton. Sir. As is the product itself”
Tapping his chin, Professor Lawton’s eyes locked heavily with Samantha’s after slowly making their way from her neck up, “How far along are you?”
Suddenly Samantha was filled with a number of ill feelings. The temptation to tell him that she had a working product that she’d used a number of times was there, but at the very thought of it Samantha felt her gut nearly drop out from her. It could ruin the day if he asked to see it and activated it. He’d be back wherever he was before and then this would play again, perhaps? With the memory kink still unresolved, there was no way she could reasonably assert that it was in working order.
With that last thought, her body slowly ebbed back to its normal rhythm. Correctness, not bragging, was a necessity. Especially to her hero. “The concept is in its alpha stage still. Unfortunately, in my tests, some of the math in my research paper hasn’t held up as well as I’d like, but most of it has proven sound thus far”
“When do you think you’ll be able to present the product, should you be hired at USI?”
Hired? The email had only stated that he wanted to talk about her research. True, her former university had given her a position as an adjunct while she got her affairs in order, but most of the work she’d been given thus far was below the praise she’d gotten for her Master’s Thesis.
“Are you offering me a position, J.W.?”
“Pretend for a moment that this is a hypothetical, Dr. Dicey. When do you think you’d be able to present the product with a grant of a million dollars to start with, likely less?”
“Well” she thought for a moment, her breath tightening in her lungs as she struggled to answer appropriately. What to say. What could she say other than an honest answer? The tightness receded as she managed to speak again, “I’m not sure. I can’t put a timetable on when I’d be able to present a finished product. Certainly, I might be able to show something off in a year or two, but I’m not really sure if that would be the case”
The professor’s mouth opened slightly as he mulled over Samantha’s words. His tongue lapped itself across his lower lip as his eyes shot to the likely week old opened water bottle on his desk. Taking a quick sip, J.W. Lawton looked back towards Samantha and responded quietly.
“That is a fair response. Given your young age, I expected you to brag a bit at the chance, but with the answer you’ve given me I think I can give you a different offer. I am interested in hiring you as a researcher here in the Temporal Mechanics department”
While by no means was USI a small firm, the Temporal Mechanics department was one of the few sections of the research group to not have any big names in the field as a part of it. A part of her felt snubbed that she would only be a researcher if she joined up, but a deep needle of reality burst through her thoughts as she remembered her current position. Despite her supposedly ground-breaking work, as her professors back at university had claimed, she was relegated to a minor position at the school. She was no one. As a part of USI, if she worked her way up she could potentially become a partner at the firm, or at the very least the head of a department. This was probably the best opportunity she’d ever get.
“Yes” Samantha said, a shine in her eyes that burst through her modest visage to lighten up her face. She was ecstatic. But, wait, he hadn’t asked if she wanted to be there, just that he was interested in hiring her.
Chuckling, Professor Lawton nodded, “Yes, yes, I was wondering when some piece of impatience would erupt” he said, a smile on his place, “That is the response I was hoping for. I’ll have the formal contract for your work here to begin in a few weeks. Make sure to bring some of your research Dr. Dicey. I wouldn’t want my newest colleague to start off on the wrong foot”
With that, the two of them rose back to their feet just short of being as one and each reached out their right hand. A quick shake and Samantha was dismissed.
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The next few years were oddly routine for Samantha. Whereas before she would struggle with the classes she was forced to teach at the university (she wasn’t the best teacher, unfortunately for her at the time) now she could actually do something with peers (albeit older peers) who were interested in her ideas. A few years out she revealed the device, but made it clear in her write-up that any use of the device, despite her modifications, would lead to completely forgetting the last 24 hours at least.
Her warnings, despite how clear and present the danger was, led to the disappearance of a senior colleague who had made himself a rival of her. While the device, funnily enough, remained, there was no other change to reality that later inventions of hers could detect. The only change was that her fellow researcher was gone without a trace. It wasn’t like they had never existed at all, but their entire person was just gone.
The disappearance of her coworker led to a new theory in the Temporal Mechanics department. If time travel was possible and someone used it, yet nothing had changed, did that confirm one of the many thoughts on the matter? Did time travel not affect the original timeline?
That was the question that haunted the rest of Samantha Dicey’s life. By the time she was senior researcher of the department, Samantha was one of the longest tenured employees at USI. People came and went quickly for the firm, but she proved her loyalty. Married at 32, moving to part-time work and co-leadership of the department by 35, she was named to the Board of the company by 37.
Then another thought occurred to her. If nothing appeared to change in her department, did that mean that nothing was occurring or was this observation clouded by other factors? The number on her GHOST machine never again got anywhere near the total it had showed that one day.
Further research showed quite an astonishing sight. Without activating the GHOST’s primary functions, she figured out how to get new kinds of readings. Readings, not of the time stream, but of her own body. While she never remembered when she went back in time, there were certain junctures that radiated as extra-bright in the time-stream. The day she invented the machine and built it was one. When she met her husband. The birth of her two children. The brightest day, of course, was the one where she was recruited by Professor Lawton, but that day’s readings were different. Unlike any of the other results, there were other detectable variables that she couldn’t discern.
The GHOST still couldn’t go forward in time, but its instruments detected something almost as bright in her near future. Something that would change her life substantially.
So she waited. The GHOST’s readings were not generally off by much, but if the hypothesis growing in her head was correct, based on a number of odd feelings in her body (crying at her daughter’s graduation from middle school notwithstanding), then she would need to find out why this day was so important. Until the day came.
Professor Lawton had remained with USI for the entire time that Samantha Dicey had been there. Serving as the mentor she’d always wanted, theories had always been an open channel between the two. They bounced ideas about quantum mechanics, caught mistakes in each other’s math, and tended to find what social time they had at the lab together.
He was stepping down from his position as Chairman of USI effectively immediately on August 30th. The decision was sudden, but with the announcement of Stage 4 Spinal Cancer, there was little reason to doubt the necessity of the decision.
The next day, on the 31st, Samantha checked the clock once more on the GHOST. 12. 12 times she had come back to this day and that alone was enough for the GHOST to show her how important today was. She needed to see the Professor, who had been moved to a hospital.
Later on that afternoon, she was sitting by the Professor’s bedside, just as he slowly woke up. Chemo had started the same day he’d officially retired, so he didn’t have much energy. Despite that, though, J W Lawton had a bright smile on his face when he saw her.
“Samantha. When did you get here?”
“Half hour ago. Glad you’re awake”
“Didn’t think I’d see you so soon. Especially not when you look like you’re here for more than just the pleasure of seeing this wrinkled old face” he said with a laugh, coughing a bit, followed by a wheeze.
Flinching at the noise, Samantha spoke as quickly as she could on the subject. “Right. Uh. How to put this? The GHOST displayed a 12 today, so I figured I’d test a theory with you that I’ve been thinking about. You feel up to talking about that?”
“Sure. Shoot”
“Why do you think that certain days, even those where I didn’t travel back, have GHOST detectable temporal waves?”
“Maybe those days are important to you? I’m not sure. What do you think?” he said, his eyes slowly craning up from looking at Samantha’s neck to her eyes. So little had changed.
A feeling in her gut. The wildest idea she had, the one that had the least plausibility, dropped out from under her and emerged in her hands. Shaking a bit, her hands put themselves on Lawton’s shoulder. “I think” he said, doubt plaguing her mind as she answered him, “my body remembers certain events or variables as important. Even if my memory doesn’t last, perhaps the act of time travel affects DNA. Somehow”
“Sounds a little crazy, Sam” the Professor said, a little bit of a curious smile emerging on his face, “but it makes some sense.”
Samantha and J W sat in the silence that followed, each thinking about the possibility. What did it mean for time travel, if done repeatedly, a build-up of physical memory occurred? Would that have a negative effect? Positive? It was unclear. An experiment would have to be done to confirm it, but how?
Almost as one, the two of them slowly grew smiles on their faces.
“Sam? What day has the most times you went back to it?”
Samantha’s eyes widened.
“Up for one last experiment, Sam?”
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As the sun rose over the horizon on July 15th, 2022, Samantha Dicey was still slumbering. Samantha Dicey was many things; She was a scientist, magna cum laude, and a firm believer in a healthy diet, but what she was not was an early riser. On a day like today, much like many before, she was also bad at waking up. Even when her early morning plans had been arranged months in advance. Another thing, audibly, she was, must have been partially deaf as her alarm kept blaring, demanding that she wake up.
7:30 AM. 7:45 AM.
Just as the clock struck 8, a sunbeam found its way through her blinds and struck her full in the face, the solar energy providing just enough warmth to cause a reaction.
A shudder, a few tics of the eye, and Samantha was awake. Slowly rolling over onto her side, Samantha wiggled a little in the sheets, her body tensing and releasing as she decided it was time to get out of bed. Then her ears picked up that same, insistent noise that she’d been able to ignore and she shot up out of the bed, her legs quickly bringing her over the threshold of the mattress to the floor.
“How late am I this time?” she said aloud to herself, her head whipping around to see the clock. 8:04 AM. Softening, her legs stumbled back a bit and she sat on the bed. 26 Minutes. She had less than a half hour to get to that meeting. Gritting her teeth, she let out a strangled sigh as she got up and made the short dash for the shower.
Cursing as she dashed past some of her lab equipment, it was days like this that she mentally slapped herself for getting a full sized apartment. She lived alone, why did she need this much space? It made it so that she was a full minute slower to get ready into the shower each morning and she could surely better afford two studios next to each other for the time she could save getting ready. But. What were the chances she’d be able to find something like that on her schedule? Calming down a bit, she had already started the shower, giving out a loud sigh as she shed her sleep clothes.
Focus, Samantha, she thought to herself as she stepped into the shower, don’t pay attention in the morning and you’ll lose track of something. Some part of her knew that something like that had happened before.
For some reason, whenever she rounded the corner into the shower, her body seemed to sway away from the towel rack. Stuff like that, these feelings, hadn’t really begun until after her 21st Birthday. She’d tried to research it before, but there wasn’t any way she could reasonably measure it on her schedule. Maybe when she wasn’t dealing with her current situation.
Breathe, Samantha. She closed her eyes and let the water pour over her for a minute. Like clockwork, her hands started moving after that minute, a whir of soap and shampoo moving through the air around her as the shower continued its downpour. Two minutes later she turned the knob and stepped out, grabbing the towel hanging from the door and dried herself off. Samantha felt out of step. Three seconds slower than yesterday.
A slow grimace emerged on Samantha’s face as she made her way over to the blow dryer, using the same practiced techniques she’d been perfecting for years prepare her for the meeting she was about to head to.
Thankfully, she noticed as she looked over her hair, her body continued the regiment of movement while she was thinking and her hair was just as she liked it: brushed out to perfection and curled at the ends. While her hair was a little shorter than she was normally comfortable with, the current length was perfect when she needed to wear helmets. Since she didn’t have a car, at least right now, that was a necessity.
Letting out a tired sigh, she donned her bathrobe and walked back through the gallery that was her lab toward her room. As she walked, she looked over to her left and smiled. There it was. Her prime achievement. Why she could afford this apartment and why she had to have a fancy security system in it. The Geo-Historic Obversor of Static Time. The GHOST machine, as she had put it. For now, what the acronym actually meant was still up for discussion given that she’d trademarked the acronym without stating what it actually meant. Not that she’d actually told anyone that she’d built the thing.
Speaking of the GHOST, she’d nearly forgotten to check the machine to see if she’d lived this day before. It was a bad habit, really, to do this. Most of the time she either saw that she’d gone back to the morning with maybe one mystery day gone or, as most mornings revealed, 0 reasons to go back in time. She wasted a few seconds of her time every day looking at the machine when she could better use her time in the morning.
Leaning down to check the “timer”, the blood in Samantha’s face turned cold. Her entire body shivered for a moment still as she took in the sight. 920. 920 times she had come back to this particular morning. Why would she ever do that?
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Post by James on Oct 14, 2016 3:15:18 GMT -5
Injin
I liked this story, Injin. It had a nice scope and it tried to play with some cool ideas. It had ambition, which is great. And to repeat what Pete said to you in early review, this is definitely not a story you could have written a year ago. You've made some real progress and I think you have definitely taken people's feedback on board, which is fantastic.
Despite all this, I'm not sure the story is 100% successful. My main concern is with the prose itself. I don't quite know how I would describe. It was too formal and overly introspective, I think. It really came across in your distinct tone and I think you need to make sure you don't get too “Injin”, if that makes sense. Stuff like “another thing, audibly, that she was” is an example of just the prose being clunky and “while her hair was a little shorter than she was normally comfortable with, the current length was perfect when she needed to wear helmets” is an example of that formalness I was talking about. And these issues run throughout the piece. Make your writing both a little crisper, “another thing she was”, and more alive, “her hair didn't hide hide the acne scar by her temple, but it at least stayed tucked within her helmet as she whizzed down the side streets of the city on her bike.”
The dialogue is a lot better than the Trucker story you wrote. I'm really impressed with by the step up. It's still probably a tad too formal than real people would be in that situation, but it has a decent patter and nothing makes me really cringe. Excellent work there.
Like I said, the plot is ambitious. I really applaud you for trying to tackle big ideas here. I'm not it quite works, though. I can see the general shape of what you were aiming for, the muscle memory, the sense of foreboding that is actually the body's memory of these events. I liked all that. But I feel like perhaps you didn't have a clear idea of exactly what it was meant to be. Sam's thought process before meeting with the Professor didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and I think that comes down to you only have a general idea of what you were writing, rather than a detailed plan for what the plot was.
Still, I certainly didn't mind reading this story. It was enjoyable even with its problems. Nice work.
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