“It reminds me of the Bible,” a girl said thoughtfully. “Genesis. ‘The Earth was without form and void….’”
Jonah grabbed the “not a black hole” boy and the girl who’d thought of the Bible and pulled them through the crowd. He wanted people by his side who could think when everyone else was screaming. He walked back to the adults, who were all sitting on the floor now, with their backs against the wall, Chip and Katherine pointing the Taser and the Elucidator at them. Gary and Mr. Hodge looked amused. JB and Angela looked distressed.
“Explain,” Jonah demanded. “Where are we?”
“The more appropriate question,” Mr. Hodge said teasingly, “would be, ‘When are we?’”
JB kicked at him, with both legs at once, since JB’s legs were tied together.
“Don’t be cruel,” JB said. “This is bound to be very traumatic for all of them.” He looked over at the screaming, hysterical mass of kids clustered by the door, then back at Jonah. “We call this a time hollow. When they shut the door, Hodge and Gary pulled this whole cave outside of time.”
“So, what—like, we don’t exist right now?” the “not a black hole” kid asked. Jonah glanced at him more closely now. He had curly blond hair, kind of like Chip’s. His name tag said Alex.
“No,” JB said. “We exist. But ‘now’ doesn’t.”
“Why not?” the girl said. Her name tag said Emily.
JB glanced toward the hysterical crowd once more.
“Get them calmed down,” he said. “And make them sit on the benches again. Hodge and Gary and I will explain everything.”
“We will?” Gary growled.
“ I will,” JB said. “And it’s fine with me if they hear only my version.”
“We’ll explain too,” Hodge muttered.
It took forever to get all the kids back to the benches, to get them to be quiet. Jonah thought he and Emily and Alex had accomplished it when one kid happened to glance at his cell phone.
“It still says ten eighteen!” he screamed. “It’s said ten eighteen since we got here!”
“Shh, shh,” Emily soothed him. “Sometimes cell phones break.”
She sat beside him, holding his hand, and that seemed to calm him down.
Katherine, Chip, and a few other kids had worked to pull the adults to the front of the room. They stood like dangerous prisoners on trial, Katherine and Chip guarding them from the side.
“Just show them the presentation,” Hodge was suggesting.
“You mean, your commercial?” JB sneered. “No way.”
“You can give the counterpoint afterward,” Gary said. “We promise.”
“Let them,” Angela said. “You showed it to me.”
JB frowned, then shrugged.
“All right,” he said.
“Go into demo mode on that Elucidator, sugar,” Hodge told Katherine. “See the DEMO button at the top?”
Katherine glared, offended by the “sugar.” But she seemed to be following his orders.
“Let me guess,” she said. “The one that says ADOPTION PROMO?”
“You got it,” Hodge said. “Now aim at the wall.”
Instantly, on the front wall of the cave, a movie screen appeared. No—Jonah went over and touched it—it was still solid rock. No light shone from the Elucidator, but it was clearly the source of both the screen and the images that suddenly glowed from the screen: shifting photographs of hundreds of faces, seeming to represent every era and culture in history. Despite the rock surface, the faces were clear and unruffled. This was beyond high definition; it was like watching reality.
“From the time humankind achieved time travel,” a voice boomed out, just like in a movie preview, “people have been stirred with compassion for the sufferings of the past.”
What followed was a montage of images that Jonah could barely stand to watch. People lost their heads to guillotines; soldiers on horseback ran swords through infants, bodies fell into pits dug to bury the living with the dead. It went on and on and on, agonizingly. Jonah felt like he’d seen all the worst moments of human history by the time the killings finally ended.
“I’m not allowed to watch R-rated movies!” a kid behind Jonah screamed. “Make it stop!”
“Shh. It’s over now,” a girl’s voice comforted. “It’s in the past.” Jonah looked back—it was Emily again.
On the screen now, all the death and destruction was replaced by a grim-faced man sitting in what appeared to be a TV studio. A caption at the bottom of the screen identified him as Curtis Rathbone, CEO, Interchronological Rescue.
“The past was a very brutal place,” he intoned solemnly. “But as much as modern humanity’s hearts went out to their ancestors, their antecedents, they knew that the paradox and the ripple would make intervention very difficult.”
“Pause it for a moment, will you?” JB called out. “I think you need a few definitions.”
Katherine squinted at the Elucidator. “Where is—oh, wait, wait, I got it!”
Curtis Rathbone, CEO, froze on the screen.
“The paradox,” JB called out. “That’s the possibility that time travelers might cause some event in the past that would lead to their own nonexistence. Such as, for instance, accidentally killing their own parents. And the ripple is what we call any significant change caused by time travelers, which then alters the present and the future. Think of a stone thrown into a pond, and the way the ripples spread out to the very edge of the water…. Is that clear? Does everyone understand?”
Jonah expected the other kids to begin shouting out, “Time travel? What are you talking about? Are you nuts?” or “The ripple? The paradox? Yeah, right. Try the psych ward!” But when he looked around, the faces around him were as solemn as Curtis Rathbone’s. The other kids had seen the nothingness outside their cave; they were ready for explanations, however far-fetched.
“Okay, back to the propaganda,” JB said.