“Yeah. Because we have rules. And people like me.”
“But what’s the point of a theory if no one is going to test it? These past few years have been the beta test. Isn’t it worth finding out what kinds of changes it can bear if the end result is saving the human race?”
“Maybe you ought to book a trip back to the nineteen forties so you can hang out with Oppenheimer. I’m not a big history buff, which I know is probably a little funny, but I do recall he had a few regrets about playing god.”
“The timestream is hardier than anyone thinks.”
“Based on what?”
“I believe it to be.”
I point over my shoulder. “I got a lot of grounded flights and a wonky clock in the lobby says different. And what makes you think the TEA is going to let you run roughshod over history?”
Kolten puts his hand on the desk and collects himself, thinking carefully over his next words. “The offer is on the table. The job. We can help you. And you can help me. Just think about it. And I trust this stays between us.”
I shrug again, but don’t say anything. I don’t feel the need to give him the satisfaction.
He nods and gets up to leave.
“Hey,” I call after him.
He turns, something like hope on his face.
“The new timeline design on Axon sucks,” I tell him. “I can’t figure out where to access my old photos. Also, fix my robot.”
“Rave nine-nine-three-one,” he says.
Ruby powers back up and it floats into the air, spinning around in fast little jerks, getting its bearings. Kolten disappears around a corner and Ruby says, “That was unsettling.”
“How does a robot get unsettled?”
“By having someone verbally take command of programming infrastructure it didn’t know it had. What did I miss?”
I explain the conversation I just had with Kolten, after which Ruby says, “His plan would be highly illegal and also very dangerous.”
“Kinda my job to know that, bud.”
“And I really do not think there is a secret room here. We would know about it.”
“Correct,” I say. “Now spill. You said something about anomalies. What is happening here?”
“One of the main tasks I have at the moment is determining the identity of the man in the lobby. You also asked me to conceal my searches, which makes them more difficult to perform. I have found, while conducting these searches, that there are…blocks in place. Something is preventing me from searching for him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means every time I try to perform a facial recognition search, the data doesn’t transfer. It freezes.”
Freezes. Do not like the sound of that.
“Let’s forget who is he, for just a second,” I say. “Focus on the video feeds. Go back a month. Maybe he came in, bought something, took out his wallet, and you can get a shot of his ID. Anything. Are you able to find out if he was here any time besides today?”
“Hold on,” Ruby says. Then: “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd? Don’t hit me with odd right now.”
“There’s more video missing,” it says. “In fact.” It jerks from left to right, like it’s looking around the room in confusion, even though the way it makes the googly eyes rattle is pretty funny. “A lot of video is missing. Our backup system is failing. It seems like we’ve been losing bits and pieces all day. Not just related to him. Going back historically. There are suddenly big holes in our records. But randomized. Like they’re…dissolving.”
“And you’ve just been waiting until now to tell me this?”
“I didn’t notice…whoever is in our system is tearing it apart and I can’t even detect their presence.”
“How do we stop it?”
“A shutdown and reboot will likely…”
“Do it.”
“But we won’t be able to recover any missing…”
“Do it!”
Ruby pauses and then says, “Done. I’ve altered the security structure just enough that they won’t be able to regain immediate access. But now they know we’re on to them. And if they got in once it’s only a matter of time. I’ll do the best I can to hold them off.”
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask.
“Should I inform Danbridge?”
“No, I’ll do it.”
I lean back in the chair, try to center myself.
Things have been weird enough, but this is the first indication that someone is deliberately screwing with the summit. And the body? They have to be related. Times like this, I would talk about the problem with Ruby, but I’m not ready to show that card.
What do I have? Bits and pieces.
It could be any one of the four bidders messing with the proceedings. Could be all four in a shadow war with each other. The dinosaurs getting out of the room doesn’t feel related, but it can probably get lumped in with the clock…if time is starting to stutter, maybe those were fresh eggs that just suddenly aged up?
Maybe it’s not even one of the four bidders. The whole reason the summit got moved was the protests. Drucker seems intent on clamping down on leaks. Maybe someone caught wind of it, and it’s an outside party.
Then there are the cameras. The way Kolten was able to take over Ruby makes me think he has some familiarity with TEA tech, if not outright ownership of it.
There’s only one thing I know for sure at this moment. We need to call this damn thing off. Too many variables. I can’t keep the people here safe. There’s already one dead body.
I think.
Can’t wait to have this conversation with Allyn.
I glance down to Fairbanks’s journal. It’s open, and I wonder if Kolten had been reading it.
Much has been said about the nature of time, with endless analogies and metaphors trying to make it so we can understand it. I don’t get caught up in all that. Call time a river or a stream or a path or an arrow. It’s all the same to me. Whenever I hear someone try to explain it I go a little cross-eyed.
But while designing the Paradox, of course I read all I could about the nature of time.
One thing I kept coming back to was something Aristotle said, that time doesn’t actually exist. Which, if you think about it, is true. We invented it. The universe does not consider the minute. Rather, he said time is like an empty container, into which events may be placed, and that container exists independently of the things inside it.
I like that. Time as a container. A container of things, like this hotel is a container of people. A container for the energy that we generate. Apparently this is called Reductionism with Respect to Time. The name is the only thing I don’t like about it.
What’s reductive about the events and the people that make up our lives?