The Second Time Around
14

Dr. Mathis woke slowly and with great difficulty. He was aware first of his name being called,but it sounded far away and dim. Then itfelt like he was in a boat and rocking from side to side. For a brief moment, the Professor felt aspike of fear that ran through him and he tried to scream that the boat wasgoing to wreck, but he found he had no voice.

Then, he was awake, and he bolted upright in the back seatof his Wagoneer. Gregory just lookedback at him with wistful eyes, then turned back to the highway. The sun was up, and it looked to be well intomorning. They were leaving the mountainsbehind now, and driving down through the different stages of autumn.

The higher altitudes had already turned weeks ago, but inthe lowlands, the trees were still holding onto the deep red and orange hues offall hardwoods. Most of the time, Dr.Mathis would have loved to see the trees like this, in their full color. Now, though, he barely noticed them.

"How long was I asleep?" He asked groggily.

"Seven hours," Gregory answered, "Maybe a bitmore."

"Seven!" Dr. Mathis exclaimed, "I told you to wake me up after two!"

Gregory shrugged slightly. "You were dreaming," He said, as if that answered itall."

"So what," Dr. Mathis grumbled, "It wasn't avery pleasant dream anyway."

Gregory shrugged again, but didn't speak. Something about his shoulders and his mannerwasn't right, though. Dr. Mathis watchedhim for a time, and finally Gregory saw him. "What is it, Mr. Paite?" Dr. Mathis asked.

For a moment, Gregory didn't answer. Instead, he got a far away and haunted lookin his eyes. Finally, though, he shookhis head roughly, and shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I haven't dreamt in a while." Gregory said softly. "Four years three months and nineteendays, to be precise. Since the firsttime I set foot in the vessel and powered it up. I sleep, I wake up, but I never dream."

"Nonsense," Dr. Mathis said behind a yawn. "Everyone dreams every night, you justdon't remember it."

Gregory shook his head slowly. "I thought so too at first, but thatisn't it. Docs hooked my brain up to ascanner more than once. I hit REM sleep,but no dreams. My alpha-wave pattern isone steady sine curve with no perturbations at all."

Gregory was quiet for a while, and unshed tears filled hiseyes. "I didn't mind it atfirst," he whispered, half to himself. "But after a while, it started to bother me. I thought it was just the shock of theexperiments, but when it didn't go away I started to wonder. Now, I know. They'll never come back. It's anodd thing to miss, your dreams. But youdo--when they're gone, you miss them."

An uncomfortable silence settled between them, and Dr.Mathis watched as the trees and small towns rolled by outside the window. After a while, Dr. Mathis cleared histhroat. "When is Rebecca supposedto be home?"

Gregory checked the time on the radio and did some quickmental math. "It's eleven hundrednow, and she walks through your door at 1630 eastern. We're about two hours out from Boston, sowe'll have about three and a half hours to set things up, and it's going totake every minute of it."

Dr. Mathis nodded and stretched as much as he could. "At the next gas station, pull in andI'll drive. I know the way in betterthan you do."

Gregory snorted. "I doubt it, to be honest," he said, "But I could use thebreak any way. I might not dream, but acouple of hours of rest goes a long way."

The silence began to stretch between them again, and Dr.Mathis didn't like it. The quiet lefthim wondering if there simply wasn't anything left to say, or if Gregory wasjust waiting for him to complete his next line.

"What did you go back to set right?" Dr. Mathis asked after a while. "You said you came back to set somethingright, and then you came back to stopme and my wife from being killed. Sowhat was it you tried to come back and change first?"

Gregory's jaw clenched for a moment, and he didn'tanswer. The silence began to stretchuncomfortably, and Dr. Mathis began to wonder if he had found the one questionGregory wouldn't answer.

"When you're inside the vessel," Gregory said, hisvoice rough, "And you're approaching critical temperature, you can hearit. There's a sound, almost like thehiss that snow falling through pine trees makes. It's just barely on the edge of hearing, butwith literally everything else perfectly still and silent, you can actuallyhear the matter settling. Then theelectromagnets kick in, and you feel like there's a thousand ton weight in thecenter of your chest balanced on a soda can. And then another, and another, expanding out until your entire bodyfeels crushed under the weight of it. There's no pain, just the weight and the pressure. It builds until you think you can't standit. Then the lights start to fade. They don't get dimmer, though, they get redder."

Gregory swallowed hard, sweat standing out on hisforehead. "At the last instant, as theblackness is closing in around you from every direction, you feel the break,the disconnect. And then you're outsidethe moment. You can see it, everyaspect, but it isn't moving. It isn'tchanging. You've created a bubble ofstable static time, where the now is eternal. And you can see, if you look for it, a thin line of what was thatconnects the dim distant past with the now. You can feel it, see it.... walk along it, and pick any moment in timeto step into, and visit again."

Tears were streaming down Gregory's cheeks as he spoke in acalm, even tone that was empty. It gaveDr. Mathis chills to hear the hollowness of it.

"Unless, of course," Gregory said after a moment,"You want to change something causative. Nature abhors a singularity, right Professor? That's why black holes exist in the firstplace. Nature tries to create asingularity, and the cosmos politely wraps it in an event horizon. Well, a logical paradox is really just asingularity of time. It collapses downto an infinite improbability well, and it vanishes behind the event horizon ofthe paradox, and nothing can cross that line."

The tears had stopped now, and Gregory's jaw was clenchedhard again. He rode in silence like thatfor a time, and then they saw an exit sign that had an Exxon. Gregory pulled off the highway and into anold, run down gas station that hadn't been open in years. He pulled into one of the faded parking spotsanyway and parked. He sat gripping thewheel, his eyes closed and his jaw clenched.

Dr. Mathis began to feel a little nervous, and then a littlefrightened.

"The reason I began temporal mechanics research in thefirst place," Gregory said finally, his voice quiet and soft. "Was my sister. When I was a kid, she went to a party withsome friends. She rode home with herboyfriend, both of them sober. She was afour sport athlete all through high school and never smoke or drank alcohol. About halfway to our house they were hit headon by some guy driving without a license who was three sheets to the wind. The guy walked away from it."

Gregory's grip on the wheel was so tight his arms weretrembling. "I tried to stopit. I tried a billion times if I triedonce. And every time I got right up tothe point of deciding to act, I got bounced right back out into that spacebetween moments. If I'd been able tostop that wreck by any method, I never would have had the drive to dig intosubatomic temporal and quantum fluctuations. I never would have developed the vessel, and that meant I wouldn't havebeen there to stop the wreck."

"A logical paradox," Dr. Mathis said softly.

Gregory nodded slowly. "And nature abhors a naked singularity. I had run into a temporal event horizon. I'm not sure how long I stayed caught in thatloop before I convinced myself it simply wasn't possible. I didn't age, and time didn't pass in anymeaningful sense for anyone or anything but me."

"And then you decided to play get richquick?" Dr. Mathis asked withperhaps more acid than he'd intended in his voice.

Gregory winced slightly, but nodded. "Yes. I was a broken man," he said honestly. "It's not an excuse, but it's the truth. I'm sorry for what I did to you, but I thinkI've found a way to undo it this time."

"How?" Dr.Mathis asked. "How are you going tokeep me and my wife from being shot if you've already seen it happen? Wouldn't that be another logicalparadox?"

Gregory smiled. "For right now," He said, "You're just going to have totrust me. I think I found a loophole,but I can't tell you or it falls apart."

Dr. Mathis frowned, but eventually shrugged. "Very well. My father worked in the signal corps in WorldWar II. He handled some of the mostsensitive and classified information there was and he always said you can onlykeep a secret if two people know about it, and one of them is dead. So for now, I don't want to be the other manholding your secret."

Gregory smiles. "Your father was a wise man," he said. "I wish I had known him. There are some things I can tell you, though,and you need to know them."

Dr. Mathis switched to the driver's seat and pulled back outonto the interstate as Gregory began to relate the basic outline of hisplan. The miles rolled beneath thewheels as Gregory spoke with detached calmness. The knot of fear in Dr. Mathis' gut twisted a little tighter and Dr.Mathis began to wish for the uncomfortable silences again.