Future 32.5.18

The small lecture hall was filled with the men and women who comprised the A2Z BART project team. The lights had been dimmed, except for the spotlight on the lectern in front of the tiered seats. Dr. Rachael Winters, one of the lead scientists for the BART project, adjusted the microphone. A slide was projected on the large screen behind her as she spoke. 

The Future is Broken

The slide changed; now showing what could easily be mistaken for a lineup in an old television police procedural, with three men and two women looking much more like a psychedelic rock band from the 1970s than a band of hardened criminals. The men's hair was long; the women's hair was short. They wore bell-bottom blue jeans, multi-colored tie-dyed shirts with leather vests.

"As we now know," Dr. Winters continued, "the ubiquity of affordable time machines in the late 26th century has resulted in a chaotic, and as we've seen in recent events, tragic fragmentation of the time stream. It's worth noting that these five consistently missed their destination by approximately 60 years despite their disparate points of origin."

The slide changed. Below each face a number appeared; the year from whence they had come. 2679. 2522. 2499. 2502. 2601.

"Our reality, outside of this facility, now continuously slips and slides in almost imperceptible ways. For the most part, this has been little more than an annoyance. Lost keys, conversations that only one party to that conversation remembers; troubling, yet largely inconsequential events, as if the entire population had succumbed to early onset Alzheimer's. For the most part. That remained true until last week, when we began to see disastrous, mass death events, caused - directly and indirectly - by these self-described Temps, or as we more prosaically describe them, Time Tourists. These events include the sudden decompensation of flight UA-717 on May 6, resulting in the loss of 342 lives, and the precipitous disappearance of the Hoover Dam on June 9, with a death toll still to be confirmed, but thought to be well in excess of a quarter of a million dead."

As Dr. Winters spoke, the slides continued to change; the faces of grieving people in Heathrow, followed by a montage of headlines with various theories as to the loss of the commercial airliner, the wreckage site in Greenland; graphic photographs of the wake of devastation created by the sudden release of 9.3 trillion gallons of water from what used to be Lake Meade.

Dr. Winters recognized Dr. Alex Stillman's voice. "Your critique of and concerns regarding the BART project are well known, Dr. Winters."

She considered the room. The reading lights on the tables made their heads appear as clumsily drawn faces on iridescent balloons hanging, disembodied, in the darkened room. "Critique?" Dr. Winters said. "I'd describe this as an indictment."

"What you're describing falls well within the range of outcomes predicted in the Monte Carlo simulations. It isn't like we couldn't see this coming. No temporal pun intended," Stillman said.

"And your point is?" Winters asked.

"My point is that you have no point," Stillman said. “We all signed off on BART. Yourself included, Dr. Winters.”

“To my undying shame,” Winters said. 

Stillman mockingly clapped his hands. “Brava, Dr. Winters. I nearly shed a tear. But we’re scientists, here. Not B-movie actors.”

"Perhaps if you will allow me to continue? Yes?" She took a deep breath. "These mass death events are not the reason I convened this meeting." The slide changed again, drawing an audible gasp followed by the humming murmur of whispered voices in the room. It was a picture of one of their own, Dr. Catherine Hale, obviously dead, her body laying contorted on her kitchen floor, her arms bound behind her back, her head surrounded by a dark halo of blood. "Dr. Catherine Hale, a member of the BART team, was beaten, raped, shot and killed last night in her apartment in an apparent home invasion."

"Apparent?" Dr. Stillman asked. "You're not suggesting -"

"Wait!" It was Dr. Tess Baker. "Are you saying one of those five Temps you showed us traveled back in time, Terminator-style, to kill Dr. Hale? To stop BART? And fix the future you say is broken?"

Dr. Winters had to raise her voice over the uncomfortable laughter that had followed Dr. Baker's question. "No. That's not what I'm saying." She waited for the room to quiet. "I'm saying it was one of us."

"Some might describe that as, well, with all due respect, ridiculous" It was Dr. Venkat Bhat. His eyes were black holes in a face that glowed as he leaned into the yellow reading lamp light.

"Is it?" Winters asked.

The room turned its attention to Dr. Bhat. "As previously, if bluntly noted by Dr. Stillman, we're scientists. Physicists. We're not hit men."

"I think you have a much higher opinion of the people in this room than I do, Dr. Bhat," Stillman said. 

"Besides," Baker said. "Dr. Hale wasn't a founder. She wasn't even a principal engineer on BART. She only joined the project, what, six months ago? Why kill her?"

The room grew quiet again, waiting for her answer. "I believe they mean to kill us all," Winters said.

A cacophony of anxious, argumentative voices was silenced by a louder voice, shouting a question. "Isn't it already too late to stop it?" Baker asked. "To stop BART?"

"Far too late," Stillman said.

"And if I may add this," Bhat said. "Who is this 'they' that you believe means to kill us all?"

“Everyone please calm down!” Stillman shouted. “Please. Alright. Perhaps we should consider an alternative to Dr. Winters’ highly speculative theory regarding a scenario we see all too often. Gun violence. Violence against women. The brutal ending to Dr. Hale's life is hardly an outlier." 

“So, just another day that ends in Y in America?” Baker asked.

“Dr. Stillman,” Bhat said, “You’re arguing in favor of coincidence as the explanation for Dr. Hale’s murder?”

“Why don’t we ask Dr. Stanz?” Winters said. “He’s the lead risk assessment engineer for BART. I would think he might provide some insight, re crime and coincidence.”

She watched as those in front turned to look for data scientist Dennis Stanz but waited until she heard a voice ask, “Where is Dr. Stanz?” Then she clicked up the next slide. 

Dr. Dennis Stanz was dead, face down, seated at the desk in his den, a large hole where his left ear should’ve been. There was a revolver in his right hand and an open laptop on the desk to the left of the dead man’s head.

“So,” Bhat said. "Not a coincidence."

“It was staged to look like a suicide but whoever did this either didn’t know, or forgot that Dr. Stanz was left handed. Or perhaps they simply made a mistake in haste.” Winters clicked up another slide. “This suicide note was found on his laptop.”

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

"Ironic, but hardly original," Dr. Stillman offered.

"It isn't a note of repentance from Dr. Stanz," Winters replied. "It is a warning from his killer."

"A warning?" Baker asked. 

"To all of us," Winters said. "One of us will be next."

"I still don't see the motive," Stillman said. "As Dr. Baker noted earlier, and all paradoxes aside, it is simply too late to stop BART. What good does it do to kill Dr. Stanz and Dr. Hale and any or all of the rest of us?"

"Is it? Is it too late to stop BART, Dr. Stillman?" Winters asked.

When he didn't immediately respond, the room turned its attention to Alex Stillman, looking for his response.

"It isn't, is it?" Winters asked.

Stillman smiled. "No, it isn't."

"So," Bhat said to Dr. Winters. "You were right. We can stop it."

"No," Stillman said. "I won't let you."

"Dr. Stillman," Baker said. "Please listen to reason. BART is clearly a failure, and not to be cliche, but a failure of epic proportions. Literally disastrous."

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction," Stillman said.

"So, what? You're the Picasso of temporal physics?" Winters asked. "Somehow this creation of yours doesn't look like sunflowers and starry nights."

"I'm not done painting," Stillman said. His face seemed to glow with malice in the lamp light, lit up like a man holding a flashlight under his chin, telling a scary story to those sitting around the campfire, who have no idea that everything he's saying is true.

"So you are going to kill us all?" Bhat asked.

"No," Stillman said. "Dr. Winters did get a few details wrong. I know killing Catherine appears to be unnecessary given her brief time on the project but after our affair, I couldn't risk it. Men are never so foolishly boastful as they are in bed. I had hoped that she would understand, that she would join me in the coming future I've engineered but she, well, I guess I let the little head do the thinking a little too much there. A mistake. Nobody's perfect! Am I right? As for Dr. Stanz, he was obviously a variable that needed to be removed from the formula. I suspected that he suspected and it turned out I was right. Once I got into his laptop I could see that he was on to me. That's where I found the emails he'd sent to you, Dr. Winters, and to you, Dr. Bhat." 

"So, you mean to kill them, too?" Baker asked.

Stillman's floating, luminous face smiled again, his mouth gaping like a skull. "Yes. And unfortunately, Dr. Winters has killed all of the rest of you as well by calling me out here. No loose ends." His smile grew broader. "Especially when string theory is involved."

"I guess Dr. Winters was right, then, after all," Bhat said, as he surreptitiously pulled the blade that he had hidden inside his jacket. "You mean to kill us all."

"As much as I hate to admit it," Stillman said. "Yes. It turns out Dr. Winters was right. I mean to kill you all."

One by one, everyone in the lecture hall pulled out a dagger, brief flashes of light reflecting off the blades from the reading lamps darting across the black ceiling, until finally, Dr. Rachael Winters pulled a blade from the shelf inside the lectern. 

"As it turns out," Winters said, holding the dagger up for Stillman to see. "All of us mean to kill you."

They all stood then. Stepping away from the reading lamps, they seemed to disappear into the darkness of the room. They moved slowly at first, encircling Stillman, closer now, blades raised, then suddenly they were on him, striking and striking again.

The blood on their hands was no longer metaphorical.