Joel2 hit the ground at terminal velocity.
She took a shuddering breath. “This past year, I don’t know what’s happened to me. Everything we’ve been doing at IT, it just got more and more out of control. Honeycomb was just an idea we were toying with, but Bill, he became obsessed. He thought it was the game changer. The next phase of human evolution. He immediately put it into production. I kept voicing my concerns—that we had no idea what the impact of such profound time gaps would do to the human psyche, to say nothing of the moral questions. But Bill kept experimenting. He said he was doing it to prove that it was safe.” Her face contorted. “I should’ve stopped him! But I was thinking of things like colonizing other planets. Preserving our species. Meanwhile Bill kept encoding himself, staying in the glacier for longer and longer periods. At first a couple of minutes, then hours, then days—”
“What about me?” Joel2 said sourly. “When were you gonna tell me what you did to me?”
“I’m getting to that! Stop interrupting me!” she shouted.
“Sorry!” he yelled back defensively.
She took another calming breath. “Bill told me not to worry about it. He programmed a fail-safe in case something went wrong. The system would automatically restore an encoded person after a defined period of time.”
“So is that what—” Joel2 began.
“Joel, please!” She closed her eyes, collecting herself. “I need to get through this. We don’t have an internal affairs department at International Transport. Corina says we’re all one another’s consciences. A month ago I discovered something even more disturbing about Project Honeycomb. IT … They were militarizing it. Researching the use of teleportation as a weapon.”
Danielle looked triumphantly at her husband, but Joel2 was confused. “Militarize teleportation? How would that even work?”
“I wondered the same thing. When I learned about these experiments, I escalated directly to Corina Shafer. She pretty much admitted the whole thing. Said it was just a trial program. Mobile teleportation was an easy way to extract dangerous people, saving a lot of lives in the process. She said Bill was handling the temporal disassociation problem. There were apparently some side effects to being kept in the glacier, and the severity of them was directly correlated to the amount of time a person spent inside. But Corina felt comfortable proceeding with the project, since Honeycomb could be spun as a morally superior alternative to weapons. Rather than kill a threat, you could freeze them in the glacier, where they could be extracted for interrogation or civilized punishment.”
“Or imprisoned there forever,” pointed out Roberto. “Removed from time itself and held in Gehinnom.”
“I didn’t like it,” Sylvia said defensively. “But I admit, I wanted it to make sense. I hate violence, and this sounded more humane than killing people. And … I wanted to keep working on Honeycomb. In spite of everything, I knew it could exist for the betterment of society. It will let us explore the most distant reaches of space. Our planet is dying. We keep patching it, engineering ways to extend its life, but sooner or later we will run out of time. I was trying to give us—humanity”—she looked back at Joel2—“our children … a chance. So I stupidly rationalized my concerns away. I told myself a lot of our greatest, most beneficial scientific breakthroughs had been militarized—nuclear energy, genetic engineering, wake transduction—but ultimately they did more good than bad.”
Danielle grabbed Sylvia by the chin. “So for that, you would decide who lives and dies? Who is resurrected and who is gone forever? How many husbands will you print? How many would satiate your hunger, súcuba?”
Sylvia shook her head loose of the old woman’s grip. “No! It wasn’t like that.” She looked at her (other) husband. “Joel,” she implored him, “none of this was planned. I really thought I lost you. I swear.”
Joel2 knew that his wife had kept secrets from him. Not just because her job required it. Still, he had no idea how deep and dark her hidden life had been. Every time she’d been distant or distracted, her mind had gone to her own personal Gehinnom. While he’d been deciding what to have for dinner or which movie to watch, she’d been grappling with the future of humanity. No wonder they had grown apart over the last year.
“Don’t you dare talk about losing people, bruja,” Danielle said. “My daughter’s blood is on your hands!”
“And mine is on your daughter’s!” Joel2 retorted.
“The tree of life is sacred to all,” Roberto rasped. “It is not our place to take or alter its fruit. To make another human being,” he admonished Sylvia, “is to usurp God’s place. It cannot be done!”
“I disagree,” stated Danielle. “This bruja used her desgraciado, and she will do so again.” She stroked the side of Sylvia’s face. Felipe gripped the back of my wife’s head, holding her for a slap, but Danielle just gently moved her bangs away from her eyes. “She’s going to bring back our daughter, mi amor.”
CHEKHOV’S GUN
“ENOUGH!” Roberto’s vocal implants struggled with the volume of his shout, the latter half of his word becoming static. “Put such heretical thoughts out of your mind, Danielle.”
“But that is the clever part, husband. It will not be us who partakes in such heresy.” She turned her eyes to Sylvia. “She will do it for us.”
Joel2 looked at his wife. She tried to hold his gaze, but her eyes kept falling to the floor, unable to face her shame reflected in his pupils. Fearful that anything he might say could push the terrorists toward more violence, he uncharacteristically opted to remain silent.
Roberto’s bony hand took his wife’s and held it. “To solicit unholy industry is to partake in it. Our daughter is dead, mi amor. It pains me as it pains you. We would not tarnish the sanctity of—”
“Hypocrite!” spat Danielle. “‘Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?’ That is Luke thirteen, husband,” she said, pulling her hand from his grasp.
“I know the scripture, wife. And do you dare compare our work to our Lord’s? We have before us the ayah. Joel and Sylvia Byram shall destroy International Transport by exposing the truth. Why veer from that plan in pursuit of a soul who is gone? Look at this poor empty vessel before us. He is not a man, but a puppet. His wife, the puppet mistress. This is what the world must know. When the other is found, we will have all the pieces we need. The world will not be able to think of teleportation without remembering their tragedy.”
“Untie me and you’ll see how much of a puppet I am,” said Joel2.